Free improvisation
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Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste of the musicians involved, and not in any particular style.
The music generally thought of as "Free Improvisation" developed in the U.S. and Europe in the mid and late 1960's, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz and modern classical musics. Free improvisation is both a musical genre and a technique.
Free music is a relatively little known, and somewhat loosely-defined genre, and none of its exponents can be said to be "famous" amongst the general public. However, in experimental circles, a number of free musicians are well known, including saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, guitarist Derek Bailey, and the improvising group AMM.
Characteristics
Performers may choose to play in a certain style or key (though free music is far more often atonal or, perhaps more accurately, non-tonal), or at a certain tempo (but would be considered unusual). Conventional songs are highly uncommon in free improvisation; there is generally more emphasis placed on mood, texture or, more simply, on "performative gesture" than on melody, harmony or predictable rhythm. These elements are improvised at will, as the music progresses.Guitarist Derek Bailey proposed non-idiomatic improvisation as a more accurately descriptive term, claiming the form offers musicians more possibilities "per cubic second" than any genre (Guitar Player, January 1997); while guitarist Elliott Sharp (himself occasionally active in free improvisation) has argued—partly tongue in cheek—that no improvisation is ever truly free, excepting the unlikelihood of amnesiac improvising musicians. (ibid) Interestingly, John Eyles notes that Bailey has been quoted as saying that free improvisation is “playing without memory” [link]
In his landmark book Improvisation, Bailey has written "The lack of precision over its [free improv's] naming is, if anything, increased when we come to the thing itself. Diversity is its most consistent characteristic. It has no stylistic or idiomatic commitment. It has no prescribed idiomatic sound. The characteristics of freely improvised music are established only by the sonic-musical identity of the person or persons playing it." [link]
Free music performers often emphasise extended technique, and sometimes lead the way in developing imitated approaches, such as the "tabletop guitar" of Keith Rowe (of AMM).
Free music performers come from a variety of backgrounds, and there is often considerable crossover with other genres. For example, acclaimed soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone was a member of the free improvisation group Nuova Consonanza. Rock musician Thurston Moore has released a number of free improvisation collaborations. And, vice-versa, many free music performers also record and perform other styles of music: Anthony Braxton has written opera, and John Zorn has written acclaimed orchestral pieces. Elements of noise rock, IDM, minimalism and electroacoustic music are not uncommon in free improvisation.
History
Though there are many important precedents and developments, free improvisation developed gradually, making it difficult to pinpoint a single moment when the style was "born". As an uncredited critic has written for Allmusic, "being freed of all rules, [free improvisation] cannot be traced back to a genre other than the very generic term 'avant-garde.'"[link]However, in the same book cited above, Bailey makes an interesting point: that free improvisation must have been the earliest musical style, because "mankind's first musical performance couldn't have been anything other than a free improvisation."
Perhaps the earliest free recordings are two songs by jazz pianist Lennie Tristano: "Intuition" and "Digression," both recorded in 1949 with a sextet including saxophone players Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh. Jazz critic Harvey Pekar has pointed out that one of Django Reinhardt's recorded improvisations strays drastically from the chord changes of the established piece. While noteworthy, these examples were clearly in the jazz idiom.
A transitional period of in jazz the late 1950s and early 1960s, instigated around the same time by Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, and lesser-known figures such as Joe Maneri, allowed for radical improvised departures from the harmonic material of the composition. Superficially, at least, such music often seemed far removed from the jazz tradition.
These ideas were extended in 1962's Free Fall recording by jazz clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre's trio, featuring music that was often freely and spontaneously improvised, and which had only tenous similarity to established jazz styles. Another important recording was New York Eye and Ear Control (1964), a soundtrack for a film by Michael Snow, recorded for the ESP-Disk label under the leadership of saxophonist Albert Ayler. Snow suggested to Ayler that the band simply play without a composition or themes.
There was (and continues to be) often considerable blurring of the line between free jazz and free improvisation. The Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a loose collective of improvising musicians and including Muhal Richad Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette, Lester Bowie, Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Famadou Don Moye, and Malachi Favors was formed in 1965 and included many of the key players in the nascent international free improv scene. (Braxton recorded many times with Bailey and Teitelbaum; Mitchell recorded with Thomas Buckner and Pauline Oliveros.)
John Stevens' Spontaneous Music Ensemble was formed in the mid-1960s and included, at various times, influential players such as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Kenny Wheeler, Trevor Watts, Roger Smith, and John Butcher. As with the AACM, many of these players began in jazz, but gradually pushed the music into a zone of complete abstraction and relative quietude. British record label Emanem documented much music in this vein.
Another notable group, Musica Elettronica Viva, were formed in Rome in 1966 by Alvin Curran, Richard Teitelbaum, Frederic Rzewski, Allan Bryant, Carol Plantamura, Ivan Vandor, and Jon Phetteplace.
In 1966 Elektra Records issued the first recording of European free improvisation by the UK group AMM, which included at the time Cornelius Cardew, Eddie Prevost, Lou Gare, Keith Rowe and Lawrence Sheaf.
Through the remainder of the 1960s and through the 1970s, free improvisation spread across the U.S., Europe and East Asia, entering quickly into a dialogue with Fluxus, happenings and performance art (Cardew was associated with La Monte Young and other New York happenings artists) initially and making its influence immeadiately felt on rock and roll. (Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd was famously an AMM devotee; the Grateful Dead were noteworthy extensions of the influence.)
By the mid-1970s, free improvisation was truly a worldwide phenomenon: Japanese players like saxophonist Kaoru Abe and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi took the music to dazzling heights, the Los Angeles Free Music Society ran ahead with rambunctious glee through the ideals of free music, and in 1976 Derek Bailey founded Company Week a festival which lasted until 1994 and combined an ever-changing roster of improvisers who collaborated live. The spirit of Company survives in many similar ongoing festival and events worldwide; one example is the annual High Zero Festival of Improvised Music in Baltimore, Maryland which began in 1999.
Free music continues to germinate and develop new branches: since the late 1990s, a style has developed which might be called "post-AMM" music: quiet, slow moving, minimalistic, and based on unorthodox use of electronic instruments or laptop computers. This style has been called "lowercase music" or "EAI" (electroacoustic improvisation), and is perhaps best represented by the American record label Erstwhile Records, and by the Austrian label Mego.
The London based independent radio station Resonance 104.4FM, founded by the London Musicians Collective, frequently broadcasts experimental and free improvised performance works. WNUR 89.3 FM ("Chicago's Sound Experiment") is another source for free improvised music on the radio.
See also
External links
- [European Free Improvisation Pages]
- [Resonance 104.4 FM]
- [WNUR 89.3FM]
- [BBC experimental music homepage]
- [Signal to Noise magazine]
- [Insides Music recording label]
- [insubordinations netlabel from improvised music]
- [High Zero Festival]
- [modisti.com] Interactive virtual environment in which information about various kinds of activities in the realm of experimental music is circulated by means of a web based mail list system, which contents are progressively filed as they are produced. Modisti currently offers through its lists promotion activities such as concerts, festivals, etc., as well as record releases.
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