Rubén García Bartolomé
«Impressions on art and free improvisation».

I don’t think it is necessary to listen to improvised music to be a good improviser. I for my part have listened to everything, genres of all kinds and periods, noises and very diverse sounds. 
We spend our lives listening to things, anything goes, anything can be suggestive or not suggest anything at all, it depends on the moment. 
The source of inspiration can come from the most absolute silence, but it is not easy to find that silence. 
When I am told “we are going to create a piece with “spaces” I consider the piece as a space in itself, a space made up of an indeterminate number of spaces.
Spaces that move back and forth, that happen, that express themselves, that are interspersed, that go up, go down, stay suspended for a certain time, juxtaposed spaces and superimposed spaces, spaces of apparent silence….
In my opinion, all these spaces must be conjugated, and they end up conjugating in such a way that they give rise to a single space, a more or less defined space, more or less beautiful, symmetrical, balanced and perfect.
This space becomes the piece that in turn gives rise to another space inside the spectator’s head, a completely subjective space.
If there is something that makes us truly human, we will find it in art, because in art there is a true connection with the divine.
It is a search for oneself, which begins with the transformation of reality, and by reality I mean the everyday life subject to convention that we are forced to live.
Art is the escape route, the rupture with the self to become the whole. In art the paradox of existence is resolved, thus reaching a true state of plenitude.
It is the path to follow in order to discover the true meaning of the beauty that underlies every atom of the universe.
Therefore, my artistic concept consists fundamentally in the ability to extract from the smallest gesture, or from the most filthy object or situation, a trait of subtle beauty, a surprising stimulus or a metamorphic fact in order to see what apparently is one way, in a different way.
The charm of art consists in the power of transformation.
As for the musical, I consider music as the great expression of the abstract, the subjective and the intangible, which leaves room for a multitude of unlimited interpretations around the piece of music, and even the music itself, since it is very ambiguous and insubstantial to say whether a random set of sounds with certain intervals of silences is music or not.
Music does not require any of the elements that define it, we could do without any of them. Harmony, melody or rhythm can be suppressed and still be music.
It only needs to sound, and therefore we could say that any sound can constitute a musical space. Music surpasses the limits of the rational, that is why it hovers over the rest of artistic expressions, enveloping them.
Perhaps not everything that sounds is music, but it can be part of a musical piece, therefore, every sound inherently carries the property of musicality, hence the possibilities are endless.
Mixing, altering, distorting, harmonizing, conjugating, and destructuring are the functions of the musician, transforming noise into music and thus into art. To bring the expression of the deepest chinks of the being to the field of sound frequencies, to give the emotions the form of frequency.
Likewise, my musical concept goes through the complex to reach the simple, a simplicity in which the whole is contained, a sound to which the Brahmins refer to as the AUM, and it is the cosmic sound from which all other sounds come from, to vibrate in that frequency is like returning to the origin of the musical.

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Rubén García Bartolomé
Improviser, musician, writer, instrumentalist and didgeridoos builder

© Fotografía de Noé García Bartolomé