Free improvisation
Encyclopedia
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music
without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its own right.
Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed in the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz
and modern classical musics. None of its primary 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
, Anthony Braxton
and Peter Brötzmann
, trombonist George Lewis
, guitarist Derek Bailey, and the improvising groups The Art Ensemble of Chicago
and AMM
.
, or at a certain tempo
, conventional songs are highly uncommon in free improvisation; more emphasis is generally placed on mood
, texture
or more simply, on performative gesture than on preset forms of melody
, harmony
or rhythm
. These elements are improvised at will, as the music progresses.
Guitar
ist 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; 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 amnesia
c improvising musicians. Interestingly, John Eyles notes that Bailey has been quoted as saying that free improvisation is “playing without memory”.
In his landmark book Improvisation, Bailey writes, "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."
Free music performers, coming from a disparate variety of backgrounds, often engage musically with other genres. For example, acclaimed soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone
was a member of the free improvisation group Nuova Consonanza. Anthony Braxton
has written opera
, and John Zorn
has written acclaimed orchestral pieces.
As it has influenced and been influenced by other areas of exploration, aspects of modern classical music (extended techniques), noise rock
(aggressive confrontation and dissonance), IDM
(computer manipulation and digital synthesis), minimalism
and electroacoustic
music can now be heard in free improvisation.
".
However, in the same article cited above, 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 before AMM, way before Derek [Bailey]! Who knows when free playing started? You can imagine lute
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. The melisma
in Monterverdi
[sic] must derive from that. But it was all in the context of a repertoire."
(about 1600 to 1900), and many notable composers and performers (such as violinist Paganini
, and pianist, organist, and composer Beethoven
) were acclaimed for their skills at improvisation. The cadenza
portion of a concerto
was an opportunity for the instrumental soloist to demonstrate their improvisatory skills. Different composers allowed for varying degrees of improvisation in a cadenza: sometimes a soloist would simply embellish a pre-composed cadenza with a few minor changes; other times, however, the soloist had much more latitude as to how they improvised during the cadenza, with a blank spot being left on the score (with or without an indication of how long the musician was expected to improvise), and pitches, notes, melodies, harmony and tempo left to the soloist's discretion.
But by about 1900, such improvisation fell out of style, and even slight deviations from a printed score could be regarded as improper.
By the middle decades of the 20th century, however, composers like Henry Cowell
, Morton Feldman
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
and George Crumb
, re-introduced improvisation to classical music, with compositions that allowed or even required musicians to improvise. Perhaps the most notable example of this is Cornelius Cardew
's Treatise
: a graphic score with no conventional notation whatsoever, which musicians were invited to interpret.
Other notable groups include Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza
and Musica Elettronica Viva
. The former was formed in Rome
in 1964 by composer Franco Evangelisti
and is often considered the first experimental composers collective. Influenced by contemporary composers such as Luigi Nono
and Giacinto Scelsi
, the group featured the later well-known film-composer Ennio Morricone
. The latter group was formed in Rome
in 1966 by Alvin Curran
, Richard Teitelbaum
, Frederic Rzewski
, Allan Bryant, Carol Plantamura
, Ivan Vandor, and Jon Phetteplace, most of whom had at least some crossover with the experimental classical world..
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. Notable contemporary organists include Olivier Latry
and Jean Guillou
. Free improvisations for organ has also occationally been recorded and released on albums, such as Like a Flame
by Frederik Magle
.
since the music's inception, but until the 1950s, such improvisation was typically clearly within the jazz idiom and based on prescribed traditions.
Perhaps the earliest free recordings in jazz are two pieces recorded under the leadership of jazz pianist Lennie Tristano
: "Intuition" and "Digression", both recorded in 1949 with a sextet
including saxophone players Lee Konitz
and Warne Marsh
. In 1954 Shelly Manne
recorded a piece called "Abstract No. 1" with trumpeter Shorty Rogers and reedsmith Jimmy Giuffre which was freely improvised. Jazz critic Harvey Pekar
has also 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.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the free jazz
movement coalesced around such important (and disparate) figures as Cecil Taylor
, Sun Ra
, Ornette Coleman
, and John Coltrane
, as well as many lesser-known figures such as Joe Maneri
and Joe Harriott
. Free jazz allowed for radical improvised departures from the harmonic and rhythmic material of the composition – for instance, by permitting performers to ignore conventional repeating song-structures. Such music often seemed far removed from the preceding jazz tradition, even though it almost always preserved one or more central elements of that tradition while abandoning others.
These ideas were extended in the 1962 Free Fall
recording by jazz clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre
's trio, featuring music that was often freely and spontaneously improvised, and which had only tenuous 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.
The Spontaneous Music Ensemble
was formed by John Stevens
and Trevor Watts
in the mid-1960s and included, at various times, influential players such as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker
, Kenny Wheeler
, Roger Smith
, and John Butcher
. As with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians
(AACM), many of these players began in jazz, but gradually pushed the music into a zone of abstraction and relative quietude. The British record label Emanem has documented much music in this vein.
There was (and continues to be) often considerable blurring of the line between free jazz
and free improvisation. The Chicago-based AACM, a loose collective of improvising musicians including Muhal Richard Abrams
, Henry Threadgill
, Anthony Braxton
, Jack DeJohnette
, Lester Bowie
, Roscoe Mitchell
, Joseph Jarman
, Famadou Don Moye
, Malachi Favors
and George Lewis 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
.)
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 Sheaff.
In 1967 classical strings-focused Just Music
had been formed by Alfred Harth
and been recorded on ECM
(1002) in 1969 in West Germany
.
, happenings, performance art
and rock music
.
By the mid-1970s, free improvisation was truly a worldwide phenomenon.
In 1976 Derek Bailey founded and curated Company Week
, the first of an annual series of improvised music festivals in which Bailey programmed performances by ad hoc ensembles of musicians who in many cases had never played with each other before. This musical chairs
approach to collaboration was a characteristically provocative gesture by Bailey, perhaps in response to John Stevens
' claim that musicians needed to collaborate for months or years in order to improvise well together. The final Company Week was in 1994.
Since 2002 New 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.
Since 2006, improvisational music in many forms has been supported and promoted by ISIM, the International Society for Improvised Music, founded by Ed Sarath of the University of Michigan
and Sarah Weaver. ISIM comprises some 300 performing artists and scholars worldwide, including Pauline Oliveros
, Oliver Lake
, Stephen Nachmanovitch
, Thomas Buckner, Robert Dick, India Cooke, Jane Ira Bloom
, Karlton Hester, Roman Stolyar
, Mark Dresser
, and many others.
at the underground scene at Zodiac Club in Berlin in the late 1960s. But it was only later that traditional instruments were disbanded altogether in favour of pure electronic free improvisation. In 1984, the Swiss improvisation duo Voice Crack
started making use of strictly "cracked everyday electronics". More recently, electronic free improvisation has drawn on Circuit bending
, Noise music, DIY-culture
and Turntablism
, represented by performers such as Yoshihide Otomo
, Hemmelig Tempo
, Günter Müller
, poire z
and many others.
Developing worldwide in the mid-to-late 1990s, with centers in New York, Tokyo and Austria, this style has been called lowercase music or EAI (electroacoustic improvisation
), and is represented, for instance, by the American record label Erstwhile Records
and the Austrian label Mego.
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 of controlled feedback
? I’ve yet to see anyone do it convincingly - hence the use of words like 'shape' and 'texture'!"
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. Taran's Free Jazz Hour broadcast on Radio-G 101.5 FM, Angers
and Euradio 101.3 FM, Nantes
is entirely dedicated to free jazz and other freely improvised music. A l'improviste, (France musique) French Radio, Listen online the last four broadcasts, only free music every week by Anne Montaron.
Based in the neighboring town of Newton, Boston is served with a good amount of free improvisation music from Boston College's non-commercial radio station 90.3 FM WZBC
, as part of its vast number of experimental programs.
Musical improvisation
Musical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians...
without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its own right.
Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed in the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
and modern classical musics. None of its primary 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
Evan Parker
Evan Shaw Parker is a British free-improvising saxophone player from the European free jazz scene.Recording and performing prolifically with many collaborators, Parker was a pivotal figure in the development of European free jazz and free improvisation, and has pioneered or substantially expanded...
, Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...
and Peter Brötzmann
Peter Brötzmann
Peter Brötzmann is a German artist and free jazz saxophonist and clarinetist.Brötzmann is among the most important European free jazz musicians. His rough, lyrical timbre is easily recognized on his many recordings.-Early life:...
, trombonist George Lewis
George Lewis (trombonist)
George E. Lewis is a trombone player, composer, and scholar in the fields of jazz and experimental music. He has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians since 1971, and is a pioneer of computer music.- Biography :Lewis graduated from Yale University with a...
, guitarist Derek Bailey, and the improvising groups The Art Ensemble of Chicago
Art Ensemble of Chicago
The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz ensemble that grew out of Chicago's AACM in the late 1960s. The group continues to tour and record through 2006, despite the deaths of two of the founding members....
and AMM
AMM (group)
AMM are an important British free improvisation group, founded in London, England in 1965.AMM have never been well known to the general public, but have been incredibly influential on the field of improvised music...
.
Characteristics
Although performers may choose to play in a certain style or keyKey signature
In musical notation, a key signature is a series of sharp or flat symbols placed on the staff, designating notes that are to be consistently played one semitone higher or lower than the equivalent natural notes unless otherwise altered with an accidental...
, or at a certain tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
, conventional songs are highly uncommon in free improvisation; more emphasis is generally placed on mood
Mood (psychology)
A mood is a relatively long lasting emotional state. Moods differ from emotions in that they are less specific, less intense, and less likely to be triggered by a particular stimulus or event....
, texture
Texture (music)
In music, texture is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition , thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece...
or more simply, on performative gesture than on preset forms of melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
, harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
or rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
. These elements are improvised at will, as the music progresses.
Guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
ist 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; while guitarist Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...
(himself occasionally active in free improvisation) has argued—partly tongue in cheek—that no improvisation is ever truly free, excepting the unlikelihood of amnesia
Amnesia
Amnesia is a condition in which one's memory is lost. The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into categories. Memory appears to be stored in several parts of the limbic system of the brain, and any condition that interferes with the function of this system can cause amnesia...
c improvising musicians. Interestingly, John Eyles notes that Bailey has been quoted as saying that free improvisation is “playing without memory”.
In his landmark book Improvisation, Bailey writes, "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."
Free music performers, coming from a disparate variety of backgrounds, often engage musically with other genres. For example, acclaimed soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
was a member of the free improvisation group Nuova Consonanza. Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...
has written opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, and John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
has written acclaimed orchestral pieces.
As it has influenced and been influenced by other areas of exploration, aspects of modern classical music (extended techniques), noise rock
Noise rock
Noise rock describes a style of post-punk rock music that became prominent in the 1980s. Noise rock makes use of the traditional instrumentation and iconography of rock, but incorporates atonality and especially dissonance, and also frequently discards usual songwriting conventions.-Style:Noise...
(aggressive confrontation and dissonance), IDM
Intelligent dance music
Intelligent dance music is a term that describes an electronic music genre that emerged in the early 1990s. The genre is influenced by a wide range of musical styles particularly electronic dance music such as Detroit Techno...
(computer manipulation and digital synthesis), minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
and electroacoustic
Electroacoustic music
Electroacoustic music originated in Western art music during its modern era following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition during the mid-20th century are associated with the activities of composers...
music can now be heard 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-gardeAvant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
".
However, in the same article cited above, 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
Keith Rowe
Keith Rowe is an English free improvisation tabletop guitarist and painter. Rowe is a founding member of both the hugely influential AMM in the mid-1960s and M.I.M.E.O. Having trained as a visual artist, Rowe's paintings have been featured on most of his own albums...
stated, "Other players got into playing freely, way before AMM, way before Derek [Bailey]! Who knows when free playing started? You can imagine lute
Lute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
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. The melisma
Melisma
Melisma, in music, is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, where each syllable of text is matched to a single note.-History:Music of ancient cultures used...
in Monterverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
[sic] must derive from that. But it was all in the context of a repertoire."
Classical precedents
Skilled musicians were expected to improvise in the common practice periodCommon practice period
The common practice period, in the history of Western art music , spanning the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, lasted from c. 1600 to c. 1900.-General characteristics:...
(about 1600 to 1900), and many notable composers and performers (such as violinist Paganini
Niccolò Paganini
Niccolò Paganini was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was one of the most celebrated violin virtuosi of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique...
, and pianist, organist, and composer Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
) were acclaimed for their skills at improvisation. The cadenza
Cadenza
In music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display....
portion of a concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...
was an opportunity for the instrumental soloist to demonstrate their improvisatory skills. Different composers allowed for varying degrees of improvisation in a cadenza: sometimes a soloist would simply embellish a pre-composed cadenza with a few minor changes; other times, however, the soloist had much more latitude as to how they improvised during the cadenza, with a blank spot being left on the score (with or without an indication of how long the musician was expected to improvise), and pitches, notes, melodies, harmony and tempo left to the soloist's discretion.
But by about 1900, such improvisation fell out of style, and even slight deviations from a printed score could be regarded as improper.
By the middle decades of the 20th century, however, composers like Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
, Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
and George Crumb
George Crumb
George Crumb is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres, alternative forms of notation, and extended instrumental and vocal techniques. Examples include seagull effect for the cello , metallic vibrato for the piano George Crumb (born...
, re-introduced improvisation to classical music, with compositions that allowed or even required musicians to improvise. Perhaps the most notable example of this is Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew was an English experimental music composer, and founder of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected the avant-garde in favour of a politically motivated "people's liberation music".-Biography:Cardew was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire...
's Treatise
Treatise (music)
Treatise is a musical composition by British composer Cornelius Cardew . Treatise is a graphic musical score comprising 193 pages of lines, symbols, and various geometric or abstract shapes that eschew conventional musical notation...
: a graphic score with no conventional notation whatsoever, which musicians were invited to interpret.
Other notable groups include Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza
Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza
Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza was an Avant-garde Free improvisation group considered the first experimental composers collective.-History:The collective was formed by Italian composer Franco Evangelisti in Rome in 1964...
and Musica Elettronica Viva
Musica Elettronica Viva
Musica Elettronica Viva is a live acoustic/electronic improvisational group formed in Rome, Italy, in 1966. Over the years, its members have included Alvin Curran, Richard Teitelbaum, Frederic Rzewski, Allan Bryant, Carol Plantamura, Ivan Vandor, Steve Lacy, and Jon Phetteplace.They were early...
. The former was formed in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
in 1964 by composer Franco Evangelisti
Franco Evangelisti
Franco Evangelisti , was an Italian composer specifically interested in the scientific theories behind sound.-Biography:...
and is often considered the first experimental composers collective. Influenced by contemporary composers such as Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
and Giacinto Scelsi
Giacinto Scelsi
Giacinto Scelsi , Count of Ayala Valva was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French....
, the group featured the later well-known film-composer Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
. The latter group was formed in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
in 1966 by Alvin Curran
Alvin Curran
Composer Alvin Curran , is the co-founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, of Musica Elettronica Viva, and a former student of Elliott Carter. Curran's music often makes use of electronics and environmental found sounds....
, Richard Teitelbaum
Richard Teitelbaum
Richard Teitelbaum is an American composer, keyboardist, and improvisor. Born in New York, he is a former student of Allen Forte, Mel Powell, and Luigi Nono. He is best known for his live electronic music and synthesizer performance. For example, he brought the first moog synthesizer to Europe...
, Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Anthony Rzewski is an American composer and virtuoso pianist.- Biography :Rzewski began playing piano at age 5. He attended Phillips Academy, Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt...
, Allan Bryant, Carol Plantamura
Carol Plantamura
Carol Plantamura is an American soprano specializing in 17th and 20th century music.She graduated from Occidental College and was an original member of the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Creative Associates at SUNY Buffalo, under the direction of Lukas Foss...
, Ivan Vandor, and Jon Phetteplace, most of whom had at least some crossover with the experimental classical world..
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. Notable contemporary organists include Olivier Latry
Olivier Latry
Olivier Latry is a French organist, improviser and Professor of Organ in the Conservatoire de Paris. Latry was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France...
and Jean Guillou
Jean Guillou
Jean Victor Arthur Guillou is a French composer, organist, pianist, and pedagogue.-Life:Following autodidactic studies in piano and organ performance, Guillou became organist at the church St. Serge in Angers at age 12. From 1945-1955, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Marcel Dupré,...
. Free improvisations for organ has also occationally been recorded and released on albums, such as Like a Flame
Like a Flame
Like a Flame is a double-album with free improvisations for organ by Frederik Magle released in December 2010 on the Swedish record label Proprius Music . It was recorded on the then new Frobenius pipe organ in Jørlunde Church on December 22-23, 2009...
by Frederik Magle
Frederik Magle
Frederik Magle is a Danish composer, concert organist, and pianist. He studied composition and music theory with Leif Thybo and attended the Royal Danish Academy of Music where he studied composition and organ...
.
Jazz precedents
Improvisation has been a central element of jazzJazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
since the music's inception, but until the 1950s, such improvisation was typically clearly within the jazz idiom and based on prescribed traditions.
Perhaps the earliest free recordings in jazz are two pieces recorded under the leadership of jazz pianist Lennie Tristano
Lennie Tristano
Leonard Joseph Tristano was a jazz pianist, composer and teacher of jazz improvisation. He performed in the cool jazz, bebop, post bop and avant-garde jazz genres. He remains a somewhat overlooked figure in jazz history, but his enormous originality and dazzling work as an improviser have long...
: "Intuition" and "Digression", both recorded in 1949 with a sextet
Sextet
A sextet is a formation containing exactly six members. It is commonly associated with vocal or musical instrument groups, but can be applied to any situation where six similar or related objects are considered a single unit....
including saxophone players Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz is an American jazz composer and alto saxophonist born in Chicago, Illinois.Generally considered one of the driving forces of Cool Jazz, Konitz has also performed successfully in bebop and avant-garde settings...
and Warne Marsh
Warne Marsh
Warne Marion Marsh was an American tenor saxophonist born in Los Angeles.-Biography:Marsh came from an affluent background: his father was the cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh , and his mother Elizabeth was a violinist...
. In 1954 Shelly Manne
Shelly Manne
Shelly Manne , born Sheldon Manne in New York City, was an American jazz drummer. Most frequently associated with West Coast jazz, he was known for his versatility and also played in a number of other styles, including Dixieland, swing, bebop, avant-garde jazz and fusion, as well as contributing...
recorded a piece called "Abstract No. 1" with trumpeter Shorty Rogers and reedsmith Jimmy Giuffre which was freely improvised. Jazz critic Harvey Pekar
Harvey Pekar
Harvey Lawrence Pekar was an American underground comic book writer, music critic and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a critically acclaimed film adaptation of the same name.Pekar described American Splendor as "an...
has also pointed out that one of Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...
's recorded improvisations strays drastically from the chord changes of the established piece. While noteworthy, these examples were clearly in the jazz idiom.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
movement coalesced around such important (and disparate) figures as Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...
, Sun Ra
Sun Ra
Sun Ra was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama...
, Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
, and John Coltrane
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...
, as well as many lesser-known figures such as Joe Maneri
Joe Maneri
Joseph Gabriel Esther "Joe" Maneri , was an American jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player. Violinist Mat Maneri is his son....
and Joe Harriott
Joe Harriott
Joseph Arthurlin 'Joe' Harriott was a Jamaican jazz musician and composer, whose principal instrument was the alto saxophone....
. Free jazz allowed for radical improvised departures from the harmonic and rhythmic material of the composition – for instance, by permitting performers to ignore conventional repeating song-structures. Such music often seemed far removed from the preceding jazz tradition, even though it almost always preserved one or more central elements of that tradition while abandoning others.
These ideas were extended in the 1962 Free Fall
Free fall
Free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it, at least initially. These conditions produce an inertial trajectory so long as gravity remains the only force. Since this definition does not specify velocity, it also applies to objects initially moving upward...
recording by jazz clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre
Jimmy Giuffre
James Peter Giuffre was an American jazz clarinet and saxophone player, composer and arranger. He is notable for his development of forms of jazz which allowed for free interplay between the musicians, anticipating forms of free improvisation.-Biography:Born in Dallas, Texas, of Italian ancestry,...
's trio, featuring music that was often freely and spontaneously improvised, and which had only tenuous similarity to established jazz styles. Another important recording was New York Eye and Ear Control
New York Eye and Ear Control
New York Eye and Ear Control is an album of group improvisations recorded by an augmented version of Albert Ayler's group to provide the soundtrack for Michael Snow's film of the same name....
(1964), a soundtrack for a film by Michael Snow
Michael Snow
Michael Snow, CC is a Canadian artist working in painting, sculpture, video, films, photography, holography, drawing, books and music.-Life:...
, recorded for the ESP-Disk
ESP-Disk
ESP-Disk is a New York-based record label, founded in 1964 by lawyer Bernard Stollman.From the beginning, the label's goal has been to provide its recording artists with complete artistic freedom, unimpeded by any record company interference or commercial expectations—a philosophy summed-up by the...
label under the leadership of saxophonist Albert Ayler
Albert Ayler
Albert Ayler was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer.Ayler was among the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that "never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz" He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved...
. Snow suggested to Ayler that the band simply play without a composition or themes.
The Spontaneous Music Ensemble
Spontaneous Music Ensemble
The Spontaneous Music Ensemble was a loose collection of free improvising musicians convened beginning in the mid-1960s by the late South London-based jazz drummer/trumpeter John Stevens and alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts...
was formed by John Stevens
John Stevens (drummer)
John William Stevens was an English drummer. He was one of the most significant figures in early free improvisation, and a founding member of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble .-Biography:Stevens was born in Brentford, the son of a tap dancer...
and Trevor Watts
Trevor Watts
Trevor Charles Watts is an English jazz and free-improvising alto and soprano saxophonist. He is largely self-taught, having taken up the cornet at age 12 then switched to saxophone at 18. While stationed in Germany with the RAF , he encountered the drummer John Stevens and trombonist Paul...
in the mid-1960s and included, at various times, influential players such as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker
Evan Parker
Evan Shaw Parker is a British free-improvising saxophone player from the European free jazz scene.Recording and performing prolifically with many collaborators, Parker was a pivotal figure in the development of European free jazz and free improvisation, and has pioneered or substantially expanded...
, Kenny Wheeler
Kenny Wheeler
Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, OC is a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. since the 1950s....
, Roger Smith
Roger Smith
Roger Smith may refer to:* Roger Smith , American television and film actor and screenwriter* Roger Smith , English soccer player* Roger Smith , Bahamian tour tennis player...
, and John Butcher
John Butcher (musician)
John Butcher is an English tenor and soprano saxophone player who has lived in London since the late 1970s. He began playing at the University of Surrey where he was studying physics...
. As with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians
Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians
The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians is a non-profit organization, founded in Chicago, Illinois, United States, by pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall, and composer Phil Cohran....
(AACM), many of these players began in jazz, but gradually pushed the music into a zone of abstraction and relative quietude. The British record label Emanem has documented much music in this vein.
There was (and continues to be) often considerable blurring of the line between free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
and free improvisation. The Chicago-based AACM, a loose collective of improvising musicians including Muhal Richard Abrams
Muhal Richard Abrams
Muhal Richard Abrams is an American educator, administrator, composer, arranger, clarinetist, cellist, and jazz pianist in the Free jazz medium. Abrams compresses both contemporary and traditional ideas into lean, elegant pieces.- Biography :Abrams attended DuSable High School in Chicago...
, Henry Threadgill
Henry Threadgill
Henry Threadgill is an American composer, saxophonist and flautist. Threadgill came to prominence in the 1970s leading ensembles with unusual instrumentation and often incorporating a range of non-jazz genres....
, Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...
, Jack DeJohnette
Jack DeJohnette
Jack DeJohnette is an American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer. He is one of the most influential jazz drummers of the 20th century, due to extensive work as leader and sideman for musicians like Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett and Sonny...
, Lester Bowie
Lester Bowie
Lester Bowie was an American jazz trumpet player and composer. He was a member of the AACM, and cofounded the Art Ensemble of Chicago.-Biography:...
, Roscoe Mitchell
Roscoe Mitchell
Roscoe Mitchell is an African American composer, jazz instrumentalist and educator, mostly known for being "a technically superb—if idiosyncratic—saxophonist." He has been called "one of the key figures" in avant-garde jazz who has been "at the forefront of modern music" for the past...
, Joseph Jarman
Joseph Jarman
Joseph Jarman , is a jazz musician, composer and Shinshu Buddhist priest. He is perhaps best known as one of the first members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.-Early life:Jarman grew up in Chicago, Illinois...
, Famadou Don Moye
Don Moye
Famoudou Don Moye, is an American jazz percussionist and drummer. He is most known for his involvement with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and is noted for his mastery of African and Caribbean percussion instruments and rhythmic techniques.- Early life and Detroit Free Jazz :Moye was born in...
, Malachi Favors
Malachi Favors
Malachi Favors was a noted American jazz bassist best known for his work with the Art Ensemble of Chicago.-Biography:...
and George Lewis 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
Thomas Buckner
Thomas Buckner is an American baritone vocalist specializing in the performance of contemporary classical music and improvised music...
and Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music....
.)
In 1966 Elektra Records
Elektra Records
Elektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009....
issued the first recording of European free improvisation by the UK group AMM
AMM (group)
AMM are an important British free improvisation group, founded in London, England in 1965.AMM have never been well known to the general public, but have been incredibly influential on the field of improvised music...
, which included at the time Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew was an English experimental music composer, and founder of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected the avant-garde in favour of a politically motivated "people's liberation music".-Biography:Cardew was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire...
, Eddie Prévost
Eddie Prévost
Edwin Prévost is an English drummer and percussionist.Prévost began as a jazz drummer before branching out into entirely improvised music. He was a co-founder of the group AMM, and remains its only constant member...
, Lou Gare
Lou Gare
Lou Gare is an English free-jazz saxophonist born in Rugby, Warwickshire, perhaps best known for his works with the improvised music ensemble AMM and playing with musicians such as Eddie Prévost, Mike Westbrook, Cornelius Cardew, Keith Rowe and Sam Richards...
, Keith Rowe
Keith Rowe
Keith Rowe is an English free improvisation tabletop guitarist and painter. Rowe is a founding member of both the hugely influential AMM in the mid-1960s and M.I.M.E.O. Having trained as a visual artist, Rowe's paintings have been featured on most of his own albums...
and Lawrence Sheaff.
In 1967 classical strings-focused Just Music
Just Music (band)
Just Music were a West German avant-garde music ensemble, an interchangeable collective of classically trained instrumentalists founded at the centrum freier cunst, Frankfurt/Main in 1967 by multi-instrumentalist Alfred Harth. An inherent anti-commercial bias kept them at arm's length from the...
had been formed by Alfred Harth
Alfred Harth
Alfred 23 Harth is a German multimedia artist, band leader, multi-instrumentalist musician, and composer who mixes genres in a polystylistic manner...
and been recorded on ECM
ECM (record label)
ECM is a record label founded in Munich, Germany, in 1969 by Manfred Eicher. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a wide variety of recordings, and ECM's artists often refuse to acknowledge boundaries between genres...
(1002) in 1969 in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
.
International free improvisation
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 FluxusFluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
, happenings, performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
and rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
.
By the mid-1970s, free improvisation was truly a worldwide phenomenon.
In 1976 Derek Bailey founded and curated Company Week
Company (free improvisation group)
Company was an ever changing collection of free improvising musicians. The concept was devised by guitarist Derek Bailey in order to create challenging and artistically stimulating combinations of players who might not otherwise have had an opportunity to work together.At various times Company has...
, the first of an annual series of improvised music festivals in which Bailey programmed performances by ad hoc ensembles of musicians who in many cases had never played with each other before. This musical chairs
Musical chairs
Musical chairs is a game played by a group of people , often in an informal setting purely for entertainment such as a birthday party...
approach to collaboration was a characteristically provocative gesture by Bailey, perhaps in response to John Stevens
John Stevens (drummer)
John William Stevens was an English drummer. He was one of the most significant figures in early free improvisation, and a founding member of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble .-Biography:Stevens was born in Brentford, the son of a tap dancer...
' claim that musicians needed to collaborate for months or years in order to improvise well together. The final Company Week was in 1994.
Since 2002 New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
collective Vitamin S
Vitamin S
Vitamin S can mean:* Vitamin S, a free improvisation collective based in Auckland, New Zealand* salicylic acid, although not a vitamin, is sometimes called "vitamin S"* a slang term referring to steroids...
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.
Since 2006, improvisational music in many forms has been supported and promoted by ISIM, the International Society for Improvised Music, founded by Ed Sarath of the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
and Sarah Weaver. ISIM comprises some 300 performing artists and scholars worldwide, including Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music....
, Oliver Lake
Oliver Lake
Oliver Lake is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer and poet. He is known mainly on alto saxophone but also performs on soprano saxophone and flute....
, Stephen Nachmanovitch
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Stephen Nachmanovitch is a musician, author, computer artist, and educator. He is an improvisational violinist, and writes and teaches about improvisation, creativity, and systems approaches in many fields of activity.-Biography:...
, Thomas Buckner, Robert Dick, India Cooke, Jane Ira Bloom
Jane Ira Bloom
Jane Ira Bloom is an American jazz soprano saxophonist and composer.-Biography:Bloom was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She began as a pianist and drummer, later switching to the alto saxophone, and eventually settling on the soprano saxophone as her primary instrument...
, Karlton Hester, Roman Stolyar
Roman Stolyar
Roman Stolyar is a Russian composer, piano improviser and educator.- Career :Born in Novosibirsk, Siberia, in a family of engineers, Stolyar graduated from Novosibirsk College of Music as a jazz pianist and from Novosibirsk State Concervatoire as a composer of contemporary and electronic music.As...
, Mark Dresser
Mark Dresser
Mark Dresser is an American double bass player and composer.-Biography:He has performed and recorded with many of the luminaries of "new" jazz composition and improvisation. For ten years he performed with the Anthony Braxton Quartet, as well as diverse groups led by Ray Anderson, Tim Berne,...
, and many others.
Electronic free improvisation
Electronic devices such as oscillators, echoes, filters and alarm clocks were an integral part of free improvisation performances by groups such as KlusterKluster
Kluster is a German experimental musical group whose work often resembles later industrial music.The original Kluster was short-lived, existing only from 1969 until mid-1971 when Conrad Schnitzler left and the remaining two members renamed themselves Cluster...
at the underground scene at Zodiac Club in Berlin in the late 1960s. But it was only later that traditional instruments were disbanded altogether in favour of pure electronic free improvisation. In 1984, the Swiss improvisation duo Voice Crack
Voice Crack
Voice Crack was a Swiss electronic free improvisation group. Formed in late 1972 by Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang, Voice Crack were initially a free jazz duo...
started making use of strictly "cracked everyday electronics". More recently, electronic free improvisation has drawn on Circuit bending
Circuit bending
Circuit bending is the creative customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as low voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children's toys and small digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators....
, Noise music, DIY-culture
Do it yourself
Do it yourself is a term used to describe building, modifying, or repairing of something without the aid of experts or professionals...
and Turntablism
Turntablism
Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and a DJ mixer.The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer...
, represented by performers such as Yoshihide Otomo
Yoshihide Otomo
is a Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist.He first came to international prominence in the 1990s as the leader of the noise rock group Ground Zero, and has since worked in a variety of contexts, ranging from free improvisation to noise, jazz, avant-garde and contemporary classical...
, Hemmelig Tempo
Hemmelig tempo
Hemmelig Tempo is a Norwegian experimental musical improvisation trio formed in Bergen in 2007. Preferring the label "research group", the trio mixes quasi-scientific sound experiments with performance art, installation art, free improvisation, instrument-making and satire.- Members :Professor...
, Günter Müller
Günter Müller
Günter Müller is an Swiss composer, improviser and visual artist based in Lupsingen, Switzerland.Günter Müller is a German sound artist that originally performed as a percussionist and drummer active primarily in free improvisation....
, poire z
Poire z
poire_z was an electronic free improvisation music group formed in 1998. The group's members all have long careers in improvised music; critic Fred Grand of Avant calls poire_z a "post-AMM supergroup."-Band history:...
and many others.
Electroacoustic improvisation
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 called lowercase music or EAI (electroacoustic improvisation
Electroacoustic improvisation
Electroacoustic improvisation is a style of music that incorporates aspects of both electroacoustic music and free improvisation.-Origins:Live electronics has been part of the sound art world since the 1930s with the early works of John Cage...
), and is represented, for instance, by the American record label Erstwhile Records
Erstwhile Records
Erstwhile Records is an independent record label devoted to free improvisation, particularly the electroacoustic variety. Erstwhile was founded by Jon Abbey in 1999, and his knowledgeable personality and tastes are closely identified with the label.Characteristic label artists include guitarist...
and the Austrian label Mego.
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 of controlled feedback
Audio feedback
Audio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output...
? I’ve yet to see anyone do it convincingly - hence the use of words like 'shape' and 'texture'!"
Free improvisation on the radio
The LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
based independent radio station Resonance 104.4FM
Resonance FM
Resonance 104.4 FM is a London based non-profit community radio station run by the London Musicians' Collective .The station is staffed by four permanent staff members, including programme controller Ed Baxter and over 300 volunteer technical and production staff.Until September 2007, ResonanceFM...
, founded by the London Musicians Collective
London Musicians Collective
The London Musicians' Collective is a cultural charity based in London, England devoted to the promotion of contemporary, experimental and improvised music...
, 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
Angers
Angers is the main city in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France about south-west of Paris. Angers is located in the French region known by its pre-revolutionary, provincial name, Anjou, and its inhabitants are called Angevins....
and Euradio 101.3 FM, Nantes
Nantes
Nantes is a city in western France, located on the Loire River, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the 6th largest in France, while its metropolitan area ranks 8th with over 800,000 inhabitants....
is entirely dedicated to free jazz and other freely improvised music. A l'improviste, (France musique) French Radio, Listen online the last four broadcasts, only free music every week by Anne Montaron.
Based in the neighboring town of Newton, Boston is served with a good amount of free improvisation music from Boston College's non-commercial radio station 90.3 FM WZBC
WZBC
WZBC is a radio station broadcasting an Alternative format. Licensed to Newton, Massachusetts, United States, the station serves Boston and its western suburbs. The station is currently owned by Boston College....
, as part of its vast number of experimental programs.
See also
- Free jazzFree jazzFree jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
- ImprovisationImprovisationImprovisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
- JapanoiseJapanoiseis a portmanteau of the words "Japanese" and "noise": a term applied to the diverse, prolific, and influential noise music scene of Japan. Primarily popular and active in the 1980s and 1990s but still alive today, the Japanoise scene is defined by a remarkable sense of musical freedom...
- Musical collectives
- Musics (magazine)Musics (magazine)Musics was an independent magazine launched with Issue No. 1 April/May 1975 of MUSICS an impromental experivisation arts magazine. It was dedicated to the coverage of free improvised music. Its need was originally suggested in a conversation between Evan Parker and Madelaine and Martin Davidson.In...
- List of free improvising musicians and groups
External links
- International Society for Improvised Music
- European Free Improvisation Pages An information resource for European free improvisation
- Signal to Noise magazine A publication focusing on avant-garde jazz and electro-acoustic improvisation
- http://avant-garde.ning.com Avant Garde Blog and Forum
- Bergstroem-Nielsen, Carl: Experimental improvisation and notation practise 1945-1999; Experimental improvisation and notation practise, addenda 2000- Online bibliographies.