Posts Tagged ‘leap off the edge’
commentary: Campbell & Park (Brighton, 11-28-07)
Moment-by-moment commentary of a group (in this case duo) improvisation as promised. BTW, yours do not have to be as wordy as this one, and you are very welcome to take a short snippet of your performances (30 seconds, 5 seconds, whatever) if you are short on time…
0:06 start
Here’s pretty much the kind of opening I did at the last class. I know Murray’s not quite ready yet (nor, I’m gambling, is the audience), and I jump in, make a bold statement, hoping to shape the rest of the performance in those stark tones
The sweeping, fluttering gesture’s fairly comfortable to play (a choice partly dictated by the fact that we’re performing cold without a warmup), and I also know there’s a few other places I can go with this—I’m familiar with the technique. I’m hedging my bets with the harmonics at the 11 second mark, saying that I may go there, or set up an alternation. I abandon this for the moment, save it maybe for later, because the ultimate tactic I decide to pursue does require the harmonics…
Why improvise? A couple of quotes…
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?
