Centipede

Centipede were an English jazz/progressive rock/big band with more than 50 members, organized and led by the British free jazz pianist Keith Tippett. Formed in 1970, it brought together much of a generation of young British jazz and rock musicians from a number of bands, including Soft Machine, King Crimson, Nucleus and Blossom Toes. Centipede performed several concerts in England, toured France, and recorded a double album, Septober Energy (produced by Robert Fripp), before disbanding at the end of 1971. They reformed briefly in 1975 to play at a few French jazz festivals. History Centipede was formed by Keith Tippett in 1970 to perform an extended composition, Septober Energy, that he had been working on. The members were drawn from his own band at the time, The Keith Tippett Group; several British progressive rock, jazz-rock and avant-garde jazz groups, including Soft Machine (Robert Wyatt, Elton Dean, Nick Evans, Mark Charig), Nucleus (Karl Jenkins, Ian Carr, Brian Smith, Jeff Clyne, Roy Babbington, Bryan Spring, John Stanley Marshall) and King Crimson (Robert Fripp, Peter Sinfield, Ian McDonald, Boz Burrell); and students of the London School of Music. Septober Energy consisted of four movements, or "concepts", that the band improvised around. It was first performed by the band live at the Lyceum Theatre in London on 15 November 1970. Centipede toured France in November 1970, giving two "memorable performances" at the Alhambra Theatre in Bordeaux. They also played for the Rotterdam Arts Council in the Netherlands, at the Lanchester Arts Festival and the Bristol University Student Union. Centipede's concerts attracted "uneven reviews", with some critics calling Tippett's music "long and leaden", and others praising it as a "bold extension" of what Tippett and his band were already doing.