This article presents a series of works for chamber ensemble (incorporating both scored and improvised material), electronics and an installation of long strings. The folto giardino of the title (derived from Mozart/Da Ponte) is a listening, performing environment in which a dramaturgy of relationships, of knowing, hearing, understanding or ignoring, can be played out. Such an approach is offered as a way of thinking about form and material when dealing with the hybrid resources typical of contemporary musical work.

ABSTRACT The author considers the technology-enabled improvisation of musical form—the projection of the dynamics of structure on the unfolding of improvised performance. Improvisation with technology has been largely concerned with its potential for more complex activity in the present. He proposes reclaiming the radical potential of technological improvisation by subverting the “permanent present.” Technology importantly affords a dynamical temporal prosthesis. Following a re-examination of times and forms in music and performance, the imagining and projection of future events is predicated on the same architecture as memory. Finally, brief consideration is given to the technological challenges of such an approach.