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Jon Rose is a master of improvising jazz violin, an inventor of complex interactive electronics, a humorist who likes to do everything you could imagine doing to a violin (and some things you couldn't imagine), and a creator of mad cut-up radio programmes. He also produces large-scale interactive concert performances; a recent project involved Jon and partner Hollis Tayler coaxing noise and music from mic'd up wire fences, in the Australian outback. This new CD from Rose, The People's Music, places him in a slightly more traditional field of composition, in which he is able to manipulate and choreograph a string orchestra, percussionists, a speaker, solo violin improvisations and video projections. It was recorded live in 2001, and is an extension of a previous Rose project, the extraordinary Violin Factory, which was premiered in Vienna in 1999. Jon talks about the inspiration behind these works: "I spent a lot of time looking through junk shops in Sydney buying the cheapest violins that little money could buy. I became aware that most of these instruments had been made in China (notably the Skylark models) and I started to imagine the factories full of massed labouring violin-makers, where these instruments were produced. Although the average professional western violin player found these instruments to be unplayable and (tone-wise) un-listenable to, I took the opposite view. With their shrill tone production, they sounded closer to the er-hu (the traditional Chinese two -string violin) than to our model of beauty and perfection - the Strad. They were in effect, the sound of Asia, the new string sound of our century! The People's Music is part homage, part parody and part meditation on these themes. A string orchestra whisks through re-composed shards of the classical repertoire; a Red Guard factory guide barks instructions; a three-piece percussion ensemble from time to time intervenes destructively.