I was a 19-year-old philosophy student, and starting to play the jazz bass, in Sheffield when I first met my friend, the improvising guitarist Derek Bailey (obituary December 29 2005) in 1962. Along with drummer Tony Oxley, our trio - called Joseph Holbrooke - developed during the next four years an original and experimental approach to improvisation that led us away from jazz into the uncharted areas of collective free playing. Virtually no recordings exist of this work apart from a few transitional rehearsal tapes. The group disbanded, quite suddenly, in 1966.

I moved away and became a composer - in fact my first commissioned piece was from Derek for the second album released on his Incus label. He later played on the Obscure Records recording of my piece, Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, and said that he had had more drinks bought for him on the strength of this than for any other reason!

The trio was eventually reunited in 1998 for a concert organised by German radio as part of a weekend-long celebration of Tony Oxley's work. This live trio performance was issued on CD (Joseph Holbrooke 98).

We then spent three days shortly after making studio recordings that now, some seven years on, are about to emerge into the public domain.

Our final date was across the North Sea, in Antwerp, Belgium, in January 1999 and we considered it possible that we might play together again. It was unfortunate that this was never to happen.

Ironically, I received the long-lost cassette recording of that Antwerp concert in the post on Christmas Eve, shortly before Derek died, and I listened late into the night to guitar playing of staggering virtuosity and invention. Derek was indeed one of the most original and idiosyncratic musicians I have ever known.