Free improvisation
Free improvisation or
free music is
improvised music without any rules beyond the taste or inclination of the musician(s) involved and typically lacking reference, musicologically, to other genres.
As well as being its own genre or format, it can also be used as a technique.
"Free Improvisation," as a style of music, 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.
Relatively little known and somewhat loosely-defined, 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.
Although performers may choose to play in a certain style or
key, or at a certain
tempo, 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 arguedâ€"partly
tongue in cheekâ€"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" [
1]
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." [
2]
Free music performers, coming from a disparate variety of backgrounds, often engange musically 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.
Anthony Braxton has written
opera, and
John Zorn has written acclaimed orchestral pieces.
As it has influenced and been influence by other areas of exploration, aspects of modern classical music (extended techniques),
noise rock (aggessive confrontation),
IDM (computer manipulation and digital synthisis),
minimalism and
electroacoustic music can now be heard in free improvisation.
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.'"[
3]However, in the same book cited above, Bailey makes points out 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 rhythmically 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 and rhythnic material of the composition. 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 Richard 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 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 Prévost,
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, for example, being 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, sometimes for the first time, 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.
A recent branch of improvised music is characterized by quiet, slow moving, minimalistic, textures and often utilizing laptop computers. This style has been called "
lowercase music" (a term coined by gallery artist and musician
Steve Roden for his own work) and or "EAI" (
electroacoustic improvisation), and is represented, for instance, 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.
*
List of free improvising musicians and groups*
Musics (magazine)*
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*
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