| Free improvisation | |
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| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Mid-1960sUnited Kingdom,United States, andEurope |
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Free improvisation (also known asfree form music orfree music) isimprovised music that rejects formalmusic theory andtonality, instead following the intuition of its performers. The term can refer to both a technique—employed by any musician in any genre—and as a recognizable genre ofexperimental music in its own right.
Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed primarily in the U.K. as well as the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth offree jazz andcontemporary classical music. Exponents of free improvised music include saxophonistsEvan Parker,Anthony Braxton,Peter Brötzmann, andJohn Zorn, composerPauline Oliveros, trombonistGeorge E. Lewis, guitaristsDerek Bailey,Henry Kaiser andFred Frith, bassistsDamon Smith andJair-Rohm Parker Wells and the improvising groupsSpontaneous Music Ensemble andAMM.
In the context ofmusic theory, free improvisation denotes the shift from a focus onharmony and structure to other dimensions of music, such astimbre,texture, melodic intervals,rhythm and spontaneous musical interactions between performers. This can give free improvised music abstract and nondescript qualities.[1] Although individual performers may choose to play in a certain style orkey, or at certaintempos, conventions such as song structures are highly uncommon; more emphasis is generally placed on themood of the music, or on performative gestures, than on preset forms ofmelody, harmony orrhythm. These elements are improvised at will as the music progresses, and performers will often intuitively react to each other based on the elements of their performance.
English guitaristDerek Bailey described free improvisation as "playing without memory".[2] In his bookImprovisation, Bailey wrote that free improvisation "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."[3]
Free music performers from disparate backgrounds often engage musically with othergenres. For example, Italian composerEnnio Morricone was a member of the free improvisation group Nuova Consonanza.Anthony Braxton has writtenopera, andJohn Zorn has written acclaimed orchestral pieces.
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. Free improvisation primarily descends from theIndeterminacy movement andfree jazz.
GuitaristDerek Bailey contends 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." Similarly,Keith Rowe stated, "Other players got into playing freely, way beforeAMM, way before Derek [Bailey]! Who knows when free playing started? You can imaginelute players in the 1500s getting drunk and doing improvisations for people in front of a log fire.. the noise, the clatter must have been enormous. You read absolutely incredible descriptions of that. I cannot believe that musicians back then didn't float off into free playing. Themelisma inMonteverdi [sic] must derive from that. But it was all in the context of a repertoire."[4]
By the middle decades of the 20th century, composers such asHenry Cowell,Earle Brown,David Tudor,La Monte Young,Jackson Mac Low,Morton Feldman,Sylvano Bussotti,Karlheinz Stockhausen, andGeorge Crumb, re-introduced improvisation to European art music, with compositions that allowed or even required musicians to improvise. One notable example of this isCornelius Cardew'sTreatise: agraphic score with no conventional notation whatsoever, which musicians were invited to interpret.
Improvisation is still commonly practised by some organists at concerts or church services, and courses in improvisation (including free improvisation) are part of many higher education programmes for church musicians.[5]
Since 2002New Zealand collective Vitamin S has hosted weekly improvisations based around randomly drawn trios. Vitamin S takes the form beyond music and includes improvisers from other forms such as dance, theatre and puppetry.[6]
Since 2006, improvisational music in many forms has been supported and promoted by ISIM, the International Society for Improvised Music. ISIM comprises some 300 performing artists and scholars worldwide, includingPauline Oliveros,Robert Dick,Jane Ira Bloom,Roman Stolyar,Mark Dresser, and many others.
Founded in Manchester, England, in 2007,the Noise Upstairs has been an institution dedicated to the practice of improvised music,[7] hosting regular concerts and creative workshops where they have promoted international and UK-based artists such asKen Vandermark,[8]Lê Quan Ninh,Ingrid Laubrock, andYuri Landman. On top of these events, the Noise Upstairs runs monthly jam nights.[9]
In Berlin, Germany, from the 1990s onwards, a school of free improvisation emerged known asechtzeitmusik (‘real-time music’ or ‘immediate music’). This has been sustained by supportive venues such asausland, Anorak Club, Labor Sonor, and others.[10]
In late 1970s New York a group of musicians came together who shared an interest in free improvisation as well as rock, jazz, contemporary classical, world music and pop. They performed at lofts, apartments, basements and venues located predominantly indowntown New York (8BC,Pyramid Club, Environ,Roulette,The Knitting Factory andTonic) and held regular concerts of free improvisation which featured many of the prominent figures in the scene, includingJohn Zorn,Bill Laswell,George E. Lewis,Fred Frith,Tom Cora,Toshinori Kondo,Wayne Horvitz,Eugene Chadbourne,Zeena Parkins,Anthony Coleman,Polly Bradfield,Ikue Mori,Robert Dick,Ned Rothenberg,Bob Ostertag,Christian Marclay,David Moss,Kramer and many others. They worked with each other, independently and with many of the leading European improvisers of the time, includingDerek Bailey,Evan Parker,Han Bennink,Misha Mengelberg,Peter Brötzmann and others. Many of these musicians continue to use improvisation in one form or another in their work.
Electronic devices such as oscillators, echoes, filters and alarm clocks were an integral part of free improvisation performances by groups such asKluster at the underground scene at Zodiac Club inBerlin in the late 1960s.[11] For the 1975jazz-rock concert recordingAgharta,Miles Davis and his band employed free improvisation and electronics,[12] particularly guitaristPete Cosey who improvised sounds by running his guitar through aring modulator and anEMS Synthi A.[13]
But it was only later that traditional instruments were disbanded altogether in favour of pure electronic free improvisation. In 1984, the Swiss improvisation duoVoice Crack started making use of strictly "cracked everyday electronics".[14]
A recent branch of improvised music is characterized by quiet, slow moving, minimalistic textures and often utilizing laptop computers or unorthodox forms of electronics.
Developing worldwide in the mid-to-late 1990s, with centers in New York, Tokyo and Austria, this style has been calledlowercase music or EAI (electroacoustic improvisation), and is represented, for instance, by the American record labelErstwhile Records and the Austrian labelMego.
EAI is often radically different even from established free improvisation. Eyles writes, "One of the problems of describing this music is that it requires a new vocabulary and ways of conveying its sound and impact; such vocabulary does not yet exist – how do you describe the subtle differences between different types ofcontrolled feedback? I've yet to see anyone do it convincingly – hence the use of words like 'shape' and 'texture'!"[15]
The London-based independent radio stationResonance 104.4FM, founded by theLondon 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. Taran's Free Jazz Hour broadcast on Radio-G 101.5 FM, Angers andEuradio [fr] 101.3 FM,Nantes is entirely dedicated to free jazz and other freely improvised music. A l'improviste.[16]
During the mid-to late 1960s,Beatles memberPaul McCartney sat quietly through an early AMM session. When asked how he liked the music he said "they went on too long".[17] Additionally,Syd Barrett ofPink Floyd also sat in at early AMM performances, with Barrett later drawing influences from Keith Rowe'sprepared guitar technique in his own psychedelic free-form playing onThe Piper at the Gates of Dawn through the use of azippo lighter as aguitar slide.[18]
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