Oktopus Connection Ensemble is the new marine monster in town, featuring a bunch of the bravest electro-acoustic improvisers from Den Haag and Rotterdam.

Graphic scores, game pieces, chance music, free jazz, surrealistic musical theatre are some of the ingredients the group make use of, combining experimental and adventurous sounds with a playful, joyful and irreverent attitude.

“Oktopus” is a series of collective improvisation projects organised by Riccardo Marogna over the course of many years and in different countries. After Oktopus Connection Octet (2013), Day of The Tentacle (2014) and Oktopus Connection Redutch (2017), the cephalopod creature emerges again in a new form!

An original feature of the group is its high heterogeneity both in terms of instrumentation and backgrounds.
The organic ranges from traditional wind instruments to percussions to DIY electronics, toy instruments, found objects. Multi-instrumentalism is strongly encouraged in the ensemble. Musicians are from different backgrounds, ranging from jazz to classical to punk and underground experimental. This helps us in developing a trans-idiomatic language for improvisation, as well as a cross-idiomatic one. 

The repertoire of the Ensemble combines free improvisation, graphic scores, chance music, free jazz with concepts and works of orchestra composers and masters like Butch Morris, Barry Guy, Cornelius Cardew, as well as original compositions. The attitude is experimental, but also playful, joyful, irreverent. We love to surprise the audience with unexpected sonic/gestural events, incorporating elements from music theatre and the tradition of happenings and Fluxus-like actions. Oktopus is strongly inspired by the long-time Dutch free improvisation tradition of the ‘60s and ‘70s , with its peculiar characters of self-irony, humour, playfulness  (Willem Breuker Kollektief, Han Bennink and the ICP).

In 2021 Oktopus Connection Ensemble has received support from Fonds Podiumkunsten – Balkonscénes, and Riccardo Marogna has received the Muziekauteur Grant from the same Fonds for composing a new work for the Ensemble, which will be presented in upcoming concerts throughout 2022.