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Land Mass – The Improvisers’ Choir

Posted: 28 March, 2025 | Category: Mainly Improvisation

A new kind of liturgy is about to begin… a Land Mass. This is a spontaneous, vocal-visual liturgy for the land, sung by a unique choir, The Improvisers’ Choir, conducted by composer Jenni Roditi, who is creating her conducting directions as the improvised music is sung.
The film, by Slovenian filmmaker Sara Pozin, was created after the music, in response to each track and to the poetry.

The film is 48 minutes long.

This is an ambient and expressionist film, and as such, it sits in a contemplative space – yet is full of the bubbling life of each unique singer and their uninhibited, freestyle, highly nuanced singing alongside atmospheric and surreal moving images of the land and nature. Land Mass may be thought of as an expressionistic liturgy looking into the wilderness and beauty of our human inner worlds through vocal improvisations that become inextricably linked with nature herself. What might be the difference?

At the start, there is an ‘Order of Service’, listed in the titles, inviting the possibility of a ceremonial space and the beginning of a participatory journey, with the promise, we hope, of redemption.

Spoken-word poet Toby Thompson opens this Land Mass with his beseeching poem Bird Bath. There is longing, fury, despair, and grit with an aching call for grace and mercy.

But how can he truly liberate himself, he asks, – from all this? What is this world, whose dawn chorus is both a ‘raucous din’ and a ‘flawless hymn’ while he reluctantly remains ‘trapped in the prison of me, like a grizzly bear in a derelict zoo’?

It’s as if his Bird Bath were a holy font, blessing the ‘sobs’ of his ‘doubtful fog.’ His call to freedom: ‘let me out, let me out!’ is no more than a ‘riddle’. He is trapped, ‘lonesome’ in his own ‘fortress,’ and can only hear the ‘wind chimes sigh’.

As the poem of the first track ends the entrance to this metaphorical liturgical space, this Land Mass – is complete. A suffering that can be recognised has been verbalised and given form in such striking poetry.

It’s time to look beyond the ‘trap’ that Toby names, to a bigger relationship with nature and the land: the ground on which we all stand. It’s time to voice, with the land itself.

Toby’s beseeching questions echo throughout, as we revisit his poem, in sections, between scenes.

We then begin the Land Mass narrative which moves through both nature and nurture’s order: Plough, Sow, Seed, Root, Birds, Sap, Bud, Seed, Stem, Birds, Sprout, Reap, Seed, Husk, Yield, Birds, and finally Orb.

There are three repetitions of Seed and Birds as a reminder of the always-hidden power in a Seed, and the always-singing world of Birds. Over these two repeating musical moments, Toby’s poem is presented as text, in sections, reminding us of the unsolvable paradoxes of everyday life.

Plough (track 1) then starts, with a human stake in this landmass, a work-song of toil, despair, exhaustion, and wild indignation.

Sow invites the human hand to intervene for a second step, casting a stratospheric spell of seed dispersal, as new life is planted in the earth.

Root then dives downwards into the earth’s underbelly, where the beginnings of life are always hidden, churning up the belly in a voice which echoes memories from ancestral times.

Sap then explodes, as if in defiance, bringing dark germinations to the light where unnamed powers of renewal refuse any deathly sentence and orgasmic ladybirds share their sweetest, sexiest joys.

Bud is formed, oxygenates, pops, dances, plays. The glory of flowers appearing on the earth, reveal themselves nakedly in shameless delight.

Stem then arches and lurches forwards, upwards, reaching to the light and yet planted, an earth-born green and purple statue, a single stem, dignified and simply, itself.

Sprout releases its overspilling energies, evoking multiplicity, repetitions, procreating, and expanding, eventually towards a plateau of steady growth.

Reap now sings of nature providing nurture in a short burst of bounty, drawn from the toil of Plough, the spell of Sow, the burrowing of Root, the rising of Sap, the celebration of Bud, the expansion of Stem and the multiplicity of Sprout. Now with Reap human hands receive their reward, coming together to celebrate their labour in dance and ritual.

Husk, the discarded sheaf, must be lost, composted, as melancholy and bereavement is embraced. Nature makes sacrifices, but it is to preserve life while strange ghosts rise from the husky ashes, in wild and fiery flights of their own making.

Yield brings in nature’s harvest for the people and to celebrate there is fire, heat, and community as hearts spark together and unite as one, in glorious accord.

Orb then softly lifts our gaze upwards and away from the land. This is a recycling and redemptive rounding. An orb is said to be a mysterious, floating, visiting spirit or even a UFO. As such a mysterious visitor appears in the music: the grand old master JS Bach with his Prelude in C Major, played on the piano by Cassie Yukawa-McBurney, reminding the listener of the mighty power and stature of the well-tempered clavier and yet, – testing the sanctity of the music – the choir are heard grinding vowels around their collective mouths, echoing textures of previous pieces.

Then, a solo vocal line, sung by Jenni Roditi, is heard over the Bach, expelling the piano further from its known aura, and it willingly accedes. Moving into a parallel universe the tempered tuning is now in intimate relationship with non-tempered vocal ornaments, slides, and improvisation. There is a rounding-off in this translucent Orb as the Mass itself is complete. We hear the final soft echoes of the choir’s voices, harmonics and crackling vocal fry, which burns away everything, into silence.

We are left with ourselves.

This Land Mass has been intuitively compiled, as an expressionistic liturgy, looking inside the wilderness and beauty of our inner worlds through improvised singing together, and connecting that magical freedom, fragility, and wild power in us all to the world of Mother Nature herself.

Is it so very different?

Finally, it is for the audience to take their own meanings and messages from it.