In Bermondsey I heard the future – at the Barbican I smelt death: new-music round-up

To Dalston to witness the worst gig of my life. The premise of the Random Gear Festival was simple and rather inspired: gather some arbitrary objects; get people to play them. In previous iterations, the offerings had included an ice skate, a wet baguette and an exercise bike. This time we had a trampoline, a microwave, a dead fish. I kept an open mind.

I was reminded that years ago at Cafe Oto I had seen the then chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Ilan Volkov rub two blocks of polystyrene together with the subtle virtuosity of Martha Argerich at a Steinway. I was reminded too of what the composer Hector Berlioz had declared in his 1844 Treatise on Orchestration: ‘Every sounding object employed by the composer is a musical instrument.’

In theory, then, there is nothing to stop a wet baguette becoming an instrument. Nothing, that is, except for man’s lack of imagination. And the lineup at this one-night event consisted of some of the most savagely primitive imaginations I’d ever encountered at Cafe Oto. Enticing combinations of objects – chosen by lot – came and went with no one doing anything remotely interesting with them. A toothbrush was used to brush teeth. A nine-inch pizza (Hawaiian) was smeared on a keyboard. Top marks to the man playing the umbrella, however, and to the artist Paul Purgas who drew a beautiful, fragile line with a clarinet.

Terrible gig, excellent lesson: a reminder that, no, free improv isn’t something anyone can do, however much people think it is. Unleash free drummer Steve Noble onto a wet baguette and you would have had a whole different night. Noble was the star attraction at a great newish monthly series called Grain at the Avalon Cafe.