Wyatt feels the setting supports honest performance. Marcus Wyatt has been experimenting with new ways to make music for digital stages.

“By the time we get artists onto our little yellow couch for the conversation,” Brauteseth says, “they’re relaxed enough to talk freely”. That the two know many of the artists so far featured helps (although they hope to extend the roster, particularly to less-publicised and older-generation players) so does their small, friendly home studio setting. Their work asks questions about performance aesthetics, band hierarchies and financial models.įor bassist Shane Cooper, the improvised Happenstance collaborations he recorded at the Centre for the Less Good Idea interrogate not only hierarchy and genre, but even what we call “music” and what we might dismiss as “sound”.Īt House on the Hill, they film and record music and initiate archiveable artist conversations for, in Brauteseth’s words “a different documenting process that shows a more intimate side of the music and highlights each person’s character.” Next up is Tlale Makhene on March 11. Now, some collaborations are simply dissolving them.įor trumpeter Marcus Wyatt and bassist Romy Brauteseth, what began as one duo session streamed from their shared Sophiatown home in April last year has turned into “ In Concert House on the Hill”: almost a year of streamed performances in collaboration with South African small groups. The apparently fixed categories of the legacy commercial music scene - roles, models, genres and more - were already feeling contingent pre- Covid, as new technology reversed old value chains. Something else is emerging from those joint ventures too.

Despite no gigs, no gatherings and no venues, players with the skills and resources have still come together to make music for digital stages. Live-streaming and collaboration have been the buzzwords of lockdown music.

Almost over the hill