Safety First

Andrea invents a class dinner as a metaphor as a way to theorize group improvisative performance. I responded that

Your metaphor of group performance as a group meal is an excellent one… but I’m going to suggest one significant difference: in group performance, the ‘meal’ can be altered in real-time depending on the resources available (or the ingredients brought by the group).

Thus, although it makes sense to say that

each of us will bring things that he feels will be enjoyed by everyone else, according to his own experience and taste

Because group performance is dynamic, we’re not stuck with Owen’s starter or Kevin’s main course.

Now, it strikes me that Andrea’s semi-planned (people are given responsibilities, but have leeway within those) potluck is only one available way to organize a group dinner. Another would be a meticulously pre-planned meal (taken, say, from the pages of a book), where all parties were given specific duties that would culminate in that planned extravaganza; yet another would be a blind potluck where everyone brings whatever is at hand. Even in this crude metaphorical sketch, we might find echos of the autocratic, authorial composerly model in the former, and the Cagian denial of agency in the latter.

But if, as Andrea and Kevin have said, we’re trying to find a balance—something in between those would be best—I’m going to posit that we’re aiming for a different kind of organizing principle.

three hungry chefs in a less-than-satisfactory kitchen

Marilyn loves Chicago cuisine (its versions of Italian, Chinese, etc.). On the other hand, Evan is a chocoholic. John likes everything.

They’re all hungry.

They search the kitchen, find utensils, appliances, ingredients.

Evan needs his fix and is relieved to find a small lump of chocolate, and almost empty jar of Nutella. His heart skips a beat, and begins work.

Marilyn rolls a pizza base. She’s not thinking too much about her next move, or what Evan (never mind John) is up to, but is meticulous—whatever it is that will result, this will be a fine, Chicago-style pizza base. She preheats the oven.

Evan puts together a dark(ish) chocolate sauce. He doesn’t know how sweet or savory it is ’cause he is too hungry to check; he is only guided by his nose. He looks over at Marilyn and feels a momentary sense of dread: should I aim for savory?

John, becoming dissatisfied with the kitchen and the course(s) of action by his comrades, decides a little spice will cure any monstrosity that might result. Just make it hot, he thinks. He grabs half the spice rack, runs between his comrades and throws a pinch of this and that into their concoctions: he pops paprika into Marilyn pizza base, and dumps whole peppercorns into Evan sauce.

Before Marilyn has time to respond, Evan (with only a vague notion of what he is doing) has poured the sauce over the pizza base.

Marilyn, by habit, more than anything, sprinkles oregano onto it. She ceremoniously slides the pizza into the oven.

Oh well, looks like we’re having spicy chocolate pizza (with oregano). It is neither Chicago cuisine, nor is it the confectionery that Evan is more used to. John is slightly horrified (but fascinated).

The meal and its making are, however,

1. novel
2. a result of accepting available resources (including people)
3. a result of competing and cooperative gestures (a negotiation in real-time)
4. neither authorial, nor the denial of agency
5. neither pre-planned, nor the result of pure chance
6. a result of individual desires…
7. …yet of accepting what it can be

Now substitute environment, context and instrumentation for the kitchen with its appliances and ingredients, and substitute improvising musicians for hungry amateur chefs.

Is improvisation the pursuit of the novel or the unknown? Possibly the shedding of boundaries?

I’m attracted to improvisation because of something I value. That is a freshness, a certain quality which can only be obtained by improvisation, something you cannot possibly get from writing. It is something to do with the leap. And when you go out there you have all your years of preparation and all your sensibilities and your prepared means but it is a leap into the unknown. If through that leap you find something then it has a value which I don’t think can be found in any other way. I place higher value on that than on what you can prepare. But I am also hooked into what you can prepare, especially in the way that it can take you to the edge. What I write is to take you to the edge safely so that you can go on out there and find this other stuff. But really it is this other stuff that interests me and I think it forms the basic stuff of jazz.

Steve Lacy quoted in Derek Bailey (1992), Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music (London: British Library National Sound Archive), pp. 57–58.

Or is improvisation about finding possibilities within the set of resources that surround you—your context, your environment? Is it an engagement with the musical eco-system?

What happens is what happens; is what you have created; is what you have to work with. What matters is to listen, to watch, to add to what is happening rather that subtract from it—and avoid the reflex of trying to make it into something you think it ought to be, rather than letting it become what it can be.

Anthony Frost and Ralph Yarrow (1990), Improvisation in Drama (London: MacMillan), pp. 2–3.

Or are these ideas not quite as disparate as they might seem? or are they both unsatisfactory?