frame|The SME playing in Islington, London, 1991. Roger Smith plays guitar and Nigel Coombes plays violin. John Stevens plays drums and cornet out of frame.
The Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME) was a loose collection of free improvising musicians, convened in 1965 by the late South London-based jazz drummer/trumpeter John Stevens and alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts. SME performances and recordings could range from Stevens–Watts duos to gatherings of more than a dozen players.
Ethos
As critic Brian Olewnick writes, the SME emphasised an "extremely open, leaderless aspect where a premium was placed on careful and considered listening on the part of the musicians. Saxophonist Evan Parker observed that Stevens had two basic rules: (1) If you can't hear another musician, you're playing too loud, and (2) if the music you're producing doesn't regularly relate to what you're hearing others create, why be in the group? This led to the development of what would jocularly become known as 'insect improv' – music that tended to be very quiet, very intense, arrhythmic, and by and large atonal."
One can loosely divide the group's history into two periods: the more horn-oriented earlier ensembles (typically with some combination of Watts, saxophonist Evan Parker and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler), and the later string-based ensembles with guitarist Roger Smith (who became as central to the second edition of SME as Watts was to the first) and violinist Nigel Coombes. The transitional point is the quartet album Biosystem (Incus, 1977), which also featured cellist Colin Wood.
Countless other musicians passed through the SME over the years, including Derek Bailey, Paul Rutherford, Maggie Nichols, Dave Holland, Barry Guy, Peter Kowald and Kent Carter. as well as influences as diverse as Anton Webern and Samuel Beckett (two Stevens touchstones), the SME kept at least a measure of jazz in their sound, though this became less audible in the later "string" ensembles.