Instant Composers Pool

In 1967 saxophonist Willem Breuker, pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink founded the ICP label in Amsterdam. Mengelberg and Bennink had been playing together since 1961 and found success as members of Eric Dolphy's quartet in 1964, as documented on his live album Last Date. Mengelberg had also been involved in the Fluxus art movement and was developing a composition style that involved musical games. As European free jazz musicians, they were butting up against disinterest in their music from contemporary jazz labels, so they formed a cooperative as a means to release their own recordings. Mengelberg coined the label's name as a testament to improvisation being composition at the instant that the music is played. ICP's first records documented Breuker and Bennink's New Acoustic Swing Duo, and a trio of Mengelberg and Bennink with John Tchicai, whose album was titled Instant Composers Pool.[2]

Breuker left ICP in 1974 to concentrate on his group, the Willem Breuker Collective, and went on to found his own record label, BVHaast. Mengelberg and Bennink intensified their collaboration and, widening their own musical project as the Instant Composers Pool Tentet with saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and cellist Tristan Honsinger. Throughout the 1970s, the ICP label continued to release records, many as co-productions with other European independent labels, including albums by Jeanne Lee, Derek Bailey, Dudu Pukwana, Steve Lacy, Paul Rutherford, Evan Parker, Maarten Altena and Peter Brötzmann. Most of these releases were of limited (and sometimes even numbered) edition and featured a distinctive idiosyncratic graphic design by Bennink.

By the 1980s, the ICP began to recruit younger musicians, as well as classical/new music violinist Mary Oliver.[1] Under Mengelberg's guidance, the ICP Orchestra made studies of and recorded albums of music by jazz greats Duke Ellington, Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk. In the late 1980s and early 90s, ICP members collaborated with members of American post-punk/Indie rock band Sonic Youth and began their long musical career with Dutch experimental punk band The Ex with whom they continue to tour and record.

In recent years, the ICP label has focused its releases solely on members of the ICP Orchestra, including Wolter Wierbos, Mary Oliver, Tristan Honsinger and Tobias Delius. The label's earlier vinyl and cassette back catalog had not been issued on CD until the release of the label's complete catalogue as a 54-disc boxed set to commemorate the ICP's 45th anniversary in 2012.[3]