Lindsay Cooper: a rebel with applause When Lindsay Cooper stepped on to the stage of the Battersea Arts Centre, picked up her bassoon and started to play, I was transfixed. As a group, Henry Cow projected a radical image, rejecting the trappings of rock-star status and, it seemed, 4/4 time as well. But what really stood out was the presence - unusual at the time - of three female musicians. Dagmar Krause sang with stark intensity, Georgie Born played a mean bass guitar, and Lindsay Cooper brought an instrument that is normally hidden in the back rows of an orchestra right into the front line. Lindsay was a classically trained bassoonist who had rejected an orchestral career for the demanding life of a rock musician on the road. She also built a reputation as an extraordinary improviser, working with jazz greats such as Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, and co-forming her own group (feminist improvisers FIG) with singer Maggie Nicols. I first met Lindsay one rainy evening in 1979 after a concert at the London Musicians Collective, a ramshackle space in north London where I had ventured into the wild territory of improvised music, following a decade working in experimental film, dance and performance art. As we talked about politics and music, and what it was like to play for six people in a small space versus an audience of 2,000 at a communist party "festa" in Italy, I got my first taste of Lindsay's ironic wit, quick mind and seductive energy. With typical alacrity, she invited me to join FIG, which became the first of our many collaborations. I was a novice musician compared with the other members of the group (which included the Swiss jazz pianist Irene Schweizer) but developed a line in improvised lyrics - a kind of avant-garde rap - and was happy to experience the rigours of the touring life, criss-crossing Europe for several years. Lindsay was an inspiring musician to work with. Her onstage confidence was rare and infectious. She played with an eclectic mix of other musicians, ranging from the Mike Westbrook orchestra to David Thomas and the Pedestrians. Her musicianship, along with her abilities to deeply listen to a number of lines and instruments simultaneously - the basis of all good improvising - became the bedrock of her work as a composer. Starting with her dense, utterly original compositions for Henry Cow, she went on to become a prolific composer of complex and melodically rich instrumental pieces, songs and film scores (including my first feature, The Gold Diggers). Four of the bands she created or played in - including Henry Cow, who until now had insisted they would never reform - are coming together for the London jazz festival's tribute to Lindsay, who died on 18 September, 2013, having lived with multiple sclerosis for more than half her adult life. I was with her when she first noticed pins and needles in her fingertips and voiced her fear that it heralded every musician's dread disease. Some years later, her leg suddenly gave way and the diagnosis was confirmed. But Lindsay did not want to be identified with the disease or thought of as a victim, knowing all too well it could come to eclipse her primary identification with music. So she kept going for more than 10 years, touring and composing - living what became virtually a double life. The public self, a dedicated professional, musical rebel, iconoclast and virtuoso; and the private self, an intrepid investigator of illness and health, spirit and matter. Eventually, when it became evident she had lost most of the strength in her fingers, she "came out" as a musician living with MS. Cooper was an articulate political activist. With hindsight, it seems Lindsay had a prophetic relationship with her disability. She would compose at the piano for hour upon hour with ferocious intensity, occasionally pulling at her hair with frustration as if she knew her time was limited. She gave her life entirely to her work, but she drew cartoons in which she called herself "the pomposa"; a wry acknowledgement of her sometimes obsessive seriousness. This was, however, also an inverse dig at a culture that rarely took female composers seriously enough. She was an articulate political activist, not just about the unequal status of women in most musical spheres, but about all manifestations of oppression and inequality. She disliked heavy-handed political rhetoric, however, believing in the transcendent power of pure sound. Her struggle to integrate her political passions with her belief in music as food for the soul led to a unique compositional voice and many vibrant, committed collaborations with lyricists (including Chris Cutler, Bryony Lavery, Robyn Archer and myself). Oh Moscow, one of the four groups playing at the Barbican, started out as a song-cycle, exploring the cold war both as political fact and emotional metaphor. We played in west and east Berlin a few weeks before the wall came down. Lindsay's work often contains complex, exuberant rhythmic structures and heartbreakingly beautiful melodic lines. Like every great composer, she evokes a world of sound, invites you to enter it and then demands that you listen, not just to her but also to yourself. As the disease progressed and Lindsay lost the ability to speak - and eventually even the ability to move a finger consistently enough to indicate yes or no - she entered a state of locked-in consciousness which was unbearably sad to witness. Being with her led to an awareness of silence and pure presence - an inverse auditory universe. In her last days, when she contracted pneumonia, Lindsay's breathing became laboured. Knowing her extraordinary breath control (including the notoriously difficult "circular breathing" on wind instruments, whereby air is taken in through the nose, held in the cheeks, and exhaled, creating a seamless continuous sound), I gradually became aware that she was in some sense still "tuning" her breathing and phrasing. Accompanying Lindsay through this final stage of her musicianship was an opportunity to contemplate the mysterious relationship between the physical body and metaphysical. When all you have left is breath and then breath itself becomes difficult, how much more extreme, minimal and focused can your world become? And yet, somehow, the space around Lindsay as she lay dying was vast and full of wonder. She invited her friends to bear witness, face mortality and question - as atheists, feminists, socialists or rationalists - the nature of infinity and the function of music to escort us there.