Australian improvisational trio The Necks (left to right) Tony Buck – drums, Lloyd Swanton – bass and Chris Abrahams – piano and organ Photo: Corina Schurmann
What will The Necks play at their Auckland Town Hall show on 7 March? No one - including the three band members - will know until they're actually playing it.
Pianist Chris Abrahams told Music 101 about the improvisational trio's deep musical connection.
While there will be tracks from the improvisational trio's new album Bleed, each piece is played differently every time it's played, pianist Chris Abrahams said.
"We would never play the same thing twice."
At live shows, The Necks play improvised pieces of up to 45 minutes in length. The three members are "guides" in the evolution of each piece, Abrahams says, but eventually it will become its own thing.
Which of the three will start a piece and how they will start is another thing he, Buck and Swanton don't know in advance.
"There's no sheet music - there's also no plan."
Playing together this way since 1986, The Necks have developed a way of communicating without eye contact and composing these pieces as they go, Abrahams said.
"As a result of us having done it for so long, there is a level of communication that you wouldn't have with anyone else."
Quite how they do it, he said, was a complicated thing that none of the members could really unravel. Although they rehearse with other hands, practicing improvisational music would be counterintuitive, Abrahams says.
"You could argue that the fact that we've done it so often is our rehearsal."
Although the New York Times has called them the 'greatest trio on Earth', The Necks' shows aren't for everyone, Abrahams said, and if one or two people don't really get into the music that's totally fine with him.
Early in their career, the band sometimes noticed that half the crowd were asleep or in "a kind of contemplative meditative state" that closely resembled it.
While some audience members possibly still have a problem with The Necks' music today, over the decades, only a couple have stood up and loudly voiced their disapproval, Abrahams said, while others are sometimes inspired to dance.
The energy coming from the audience is something the band perceive and work with, he said, as they build up excitement in the music.
"The way we make music relies on us also being part of the audience. It relies on us hearing what we're doing and acting accordingly and trying to convey to an audience, including ourselves, the excitement.
"Overall, I think there's an emotional transcendentalism people will be uplifted by. We each tend to lose our individuality in the pieces, like the three of us form this thing 'The Necks music'.
"That can be a very exciting thing to hear and a very transcendent thing and very emotional."
Tickets for The Necks' Auckland show are available here.
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