Interesting stuff, Nat. I particularly like the political analogies. The, freeish, large ensembles I've seen most often are Boston groups, Aardvark Orchestra--Harvey and I once talked about a possible concerto for road parrot (my group) and aardvark orch., and Katz's ensemble at B.U. which regularly commissions works from big names like Hemphill and Muhal Abrams. My sense has come to be that, like in most things, some few people are very good at figuring out and making the kind of music that works with a big group, the rest pretty much blow at it.

As Nat says, there has to be direction as well as freedom, and, in addition, such musical ideas as are imposed on the players--either by the scores (graphic or otherwise) or by the conduction--have to have some substance. I mean, let's be specific: Guy can do it, Dunmall apparently can't, Braxton and Morris can do it, but Muhal only occasionally strikes gold. Based on "Open Coma," I'd say it isn't really Tim Berne's thing either. (I was surprised at that).

Who else is good at it (that I know of)? IMHO, there's Fujii, Gustaffson, Fell, Mitchell, Taylor, Gies. Sometimes Harvey, Thompson, Korsrud, Golia, Katz and Borgmann. I also like that midwest group that Bivins has worked with. Not too many, really. (FWIW, I don't care for the Italian groups I've heard.) But, of course, it's expensive to practice and improve at conduction unless you're associated with a university. Not too many Ellingtons around who've earned the "luxury" of working the bugs out over many years.

Nat: hm, I know you weren't present for the original Morris-directed version of the LIO but what was your understanding of that background to the group? I say this because (1) various sources (both some LIO members I talked to & also some published sources) said that the Morris tour was not a happy one, with a lot of friction between Morris & the improvisors (I gather Morris expected very strict adherence to his conduction system); (2) the LIO members I'd talked to had indicated that this difficult experience lay behind some of the more puzzling aspects of the LIO--in particular the desire for a nonhierarchical organizational & compositional structure. -- But all of this is mostly what I've heard 2ndhand or in informal conversation so I wanted to get a clearer picture of it.

The one LIO gig I saw in 2002 (F of the City) was pretty sprawling & mixed. I suppose part of my problem was just that if you're going to get that big a band together I'd like there to be some real compositional substance to sink your teeth into, but instead it all seemed pretty casual, with one or two exceptions--the kinds of "pieces" that could be (& in fact mostly were!) run down half an hour before the gig. I'd be genuinely interested to know if the resulting Emanem CD of a selection of pieces from that gig (just released) came off better than the live experience: quite possibly, as with the very nice two-CD boiling down of the small groups from the same festival, a frustratingly up&down experience can with judicious editing become more consistently inspiring.

Nate, I don't know much about the Morris tour, although I've heard similar things to you about it. I doubt there would have been any large ensemble tours of the UK without someone from the US directing it, so that may also have caused some friction.

>>more puzzling aspects of the LIO--in particular the desire for a nonhierarchical organizational & compositional structure

Non-hierarchical describes most free-improv groups, so I don't really find it puzzling that they'd try to mirror that in a large ensemble, at least at first.

What I don't really get is what both Nate and Walt alluded to above. What I understand of the LIO (and I've only been to one of the Red Rose gigs, plus the two most recent FOtC appearances), is that any member of the group can lead a piece. I'd assume that in principle, the group allows any member temporary authority for a period of time, to avoid one or two members dominating. That's got clear problems when it comes to quality control, but I can see why a group would have adopted it, especially if they'd had a less than successful experience with one individual having the control.

What seems to be more the case, although there are clearly exceptions, is that once authority has been temporarily ceded to one member of the group for the duration of a piece, there is a reluctance on that individual to then assume that authority, hence "'pieces' that could be (& in fact mostly were!) run down half an hour before the gig." This may well be becuase with 30 or so members, and maybe 10-15 regularly contributing pieces, there's no time to do pieces that require a lot of rehearsal, or maybe there's no willingness to rehearse (or replace rehearse with 'explore various problems arising during performance of different conduction/composition variants')

My problem with this, is that having someone up front who has temporary authority to tell you when to play, what to play, when to stop, who to play with, but barely uses that authority, means you're always waiting for an instruction, yet not always getting it. The performances I've seen have had a degree of hesitancy which I think stems from this, although I really have little knowledge of what goes on. If that's the case however, why not just improvise without anyone directing the ensemble (I know they do this, but there always seems to be one, token, free-improv piece, as opposed to that being a big part of what the ensemble does).

I'd much rather see hesitancy and confusion arising out of a lot of people negotiating amongst themselves, than hesitancy created by someone not fully taking on the responsibility given to them. I've enjoyed some of the pieces a lot, and very much enjoy the playing of a lot of the members of the group, but there doesn't appear to have been much evolution in the organising principles, going only on the FOtC appearances.

Maybe I should go see them at the Red Rose next time they play.

"... This necessitates a lesser focus on their own relationship to their instrument, and the musical process going on – attention must also be focussed on the source of the next direction."

Nat -- as I read it, there are three relationships being described here: 1) with one's self (the musical instrument as self-extension); 2) with one's collaborators; 3) with the work itself. How do you see all these coming together in the kind of improvised music you yourself most value? [I suppose what I'm driving at is the negotiation between knowing oneself via meditation, reflection, etc., and knowing oneself via others: between listening and being listened to.] I understand you when you say you look for "the negotiation between the will of the individuals within a larger group" in the experience of improvisation, yet isn't it somewhat necessary to achieve a level of instrumental proficiency before one can even hope to communicate with others musically? I'm not trying to re-instate old notions of musical virtuosity here, but rather in getting a sense of how radically criteria for "virtuosity" have changed post-Coltrane. It is amazing to me to consider that musicans as disparate as Evan Parker, J. J. Johnson, Barre Phillips, Oscar Peterson, and Axel Dorner can all legitimately be described with a single term. I do feel that when we do discuss "virtuosity", we are discussing a very special kind of relationship to one's own, ahem, "material reality" (body), as well as one's own cognitive abilities. so how do we approach music, whether composed or improvised, that aims for at least a temporary obliteration or at least atomization of self?

Walt, look into Markus Eichenberger (reviewed at right), whose first (?) recorded project turned out a stimulating glitch-free instance of conducting with a large ensemble.

Gustafsson... are you basing your comment on Hidros One? I hear that music as minimalist and the only moment of real tension for me was in the middle composed piece with Sandell centrally on organ. Beautiful stuff, but I'd like to hear Mats work with bigger chunks, rather than watery slivers, of sound.

Nat, I am forwarding this piece to my mother first chance I get. She and I sat down with Inscape-Tableaux and Guy's sheet music last time she was in town and, while she genuinely enjoyed the music, had a difficult time wrapping her head around the process. Even with the score in front of her. I tried to explain but ended up supplying only blocks of information and interpretations rather than any fluid sort of analysis. Your essay should be just the fix. She'll especially appreciate that you have intimate experience with these processes. I enjoyed it.

Joe,

>>there are three relationships being described here: 1) with one's self (the musical instrument as self-extension); 2) with one's collaborators; 3) with the work itself. How do you see all these coming together in the kind of improvised music you yourself most value?

With jazz, or with most music that doesn't incorporate a lot of extended technique, the relationship is usually focused most on the communication between musicians, and the negotiation (harmonic/melodic/rythmic) with the tune being played. The technical process of sound production and finger technique are a given - there may be occasions where you are taken to the extreme of your technique (in terms of speed, usually) by certain musical ideas, but it's rarely the case that extremes of technique in terms of sound production - pitch/volume - are the focus of the musical activity. In that sort of situation, virtuosity is going to the limit of your musicality - harmonic/rhythmic/melodic invention - without running into trouble executing it.

As the music becomes freer, sometimes, not always, the relationship evens out. A lot of music and/or musicians I'm involved with derive most of the musical material from the instrument itself. There is no externally imposed compositional structure, and no generalised stylistic framework. In other words, with some free-improv, it is more free-jazz without tunes - there is still a lot of musical material to draw from - plenty of historical references that can be made easily, even though they're being avoided.

As the music becomes more and more concerned with sound in and of itself, with less or in some cases no implied harmonic/rhythmic/melodic content, the technical production of sound becomes more important. If you're trying to manipulate small details of a certain sound, as opposed to the finer details of a given framework, there's much more concentration needed on sound production itself: tiny, tiny muscles have a massive effect on the sound of a saxophone, and certain fingerings allow maybe a dozen or more distinct pitch combinations or single pitches (most of them very high) using different combinations of throat and embouchure.

At that point, there's no way to draw your focus away from what your doing in terms of playing, although clearly you can't not hear what else is going on (which is why I always find it odd when people say they ignore other musicians, you can't really ignore people, you can only choose not to react to what you hear, which is in itself a reaction).

This view makes sense to an extent - certainly I think the relationship with instrument is the primary factor separating most improvised music now with it's roots both in jazz and straight music. There has always been that focus in jazz - Ben Webster's vibrato, Roland Kirk is one of the main people to have made the shift (and I'm pretty sure Evan Parker acknowledges him as a fairly direct influence), but this was always in the context of tunes, on the perimeter of the main body of the work.

However, you now get to a point where someone like Evan Parker or John Butcher, or Eddie Prevost has been using extended technique on their instrument for 15, 25, 35 years. Although there's a wider variety of muscle memory involved for some of these techniques, eventually it becomes as easy to differentiate aspects of certain techniques as it does to produce certain notes clearly with even tone on the instrument. You then get to a stage where there is a level of extended technique immediately available - it may not sound like the instrument being played, but it's as accessible to the player as any other sound on the instrument. There's then a level beyond that, and beyond that, where you're often making finer gradations between various sounds - there's a limited number of fingerings on the saxophone, so exploiting certain ones pushes you into what might sound superficially like a smaller and smaller sound-world, even if you're actually expanding your technique.

At the point where people are able to play with most instruments, using only extended technique, but completely within their own personal technique, there could well cease to be anything to react against in terms of material. You then have a situation where the contextualisation of that material - different playing partners -becomes all important. The balance switches slightly towards the other direction.

With the possible references in various improvised musics, there is potentially (and I think actually) a repertoire of extended techniques which could be learnt (aurally, not much written about this stuff) from recordings of Parker, Butcher, Rowe, Bailey, Prevost etc. Much more difficult to do this in a conscious way than transcribe a Coltrane solo, since there may be basic physiological differences that prevent similar sounds from being produced - these get magnified the further away from conventional technique you get depending on the instrument. To that extent, we're now in a position where you could play supposedly free-improv, all the material of which was nicked from recordings of various first, second and third generation improvisers.

Where this goes back to the composition/conduction question, I don't think it's possible to focus intently on sound production (assuming that's what the musician would be doing under 'normal' conditions) and what other musicians are doing, and on a conductor/composition or both. It may be a sign of the maturity of this music that people have got to a point where their technical ability allows them to dissassociate from what they're doing on their instrument and focus entirely on what's going on elsewhere. Again, since this has been a focus of the music for so long (IMO, of course), it's difficult to call whether it marks a retrogression, or some kind of evolution where material that previously was only organised through an entirely personal relationship may have reached a point where it can be re-combined successfully with other forms of music making. Again, whether that's desirable...

Right, I was thinking of "Hidros I." I like all that tuberculin wheezing stuff best.

Nat -- thanks for the very generous response. But I wanted to warn you that I have more questions, and that there are forthcoming.

FWIW, Joe, I don't consider playing an obliteration of self. Not sure I'm capable of formulating that statement much beyond that, but I rarely think in any kind of meditative terms as regards music, and I assume that question approaches it in those terms.

Would be interested what you mean by "at least atomization".

I thought Nat's June 2 posting, basically on what/how a free improviser does/thinks, was excellent and educational.

Thanks.

Simon Weil

Nat -- in those abbreviated comments on the musical self, I guess I was attempting to build on an old discussion that took place at the JazzCorner BBS, re: "egoless" improvisation. In other words, improvisation stripped, bled, denuded (its hard to come up with verbs that don't have a violent connotation here) of all signifiers of apparent self-expression. Some might read this as a denial of individuality beyond what is dictated by the physical properties of one's chosen means of expression / instrument. So that, to a certain extent, one is surrendering overt expressions of will and self-interest in service to the process of sound production. One's "ego" becomes but one value in a larger field. I've found this synopsis by Cook and Morton (from the PENGUIN GUIDE entry on Keith Rowe) to be a very useful synopsis of the kind of thing around which I'm talking:

"[is improvised music] a function of specific and idiomatically delimited technical resources... [or should] musical instruments be an invisible and ultimately dispensable conduit for sound[?]"

For me, whatever debate attaches itself to the issues above broaches the subject of intent, and whether we listen for clear indicators of musical intent. Are the sounds enough, or do we need to know as much as we can about the circumstances by which and under which these sounds are manipulated and organized? When you apply some of these ideas to the ensemble, I think it's apropos to wonder about dispersal of intent through a collaborative network, hence my choice of the word "atomization". So the old questions still stick for me. How is one related to one's self? How is one's related to others? How does it all fit together? When does "denial" of self become full realization of self? I know, the rhetoric may sound mystical in some regard, but I think its much more existential than that... Recall Sartre's "Hell is other people", which I think can be read as "Hell is the presence of other people" as much as it can be read as "Hell is the absence of other people", or, put another way, "Hell is having to need the presence of other people".

But in terms of aesthetics alone, I would say that one difficulty of using a description like "egoless" is that you could easily divorce it from an improvisational context and apply it with the same basic salutary effect to pseudo-Muzak like the New Christy Minstrels. Likewise, in that ensemble, each (anonymous) singer subsumes him/herself in the choir and sings one assigned partial in the greater group harmony. Such a valuation -- and I know I've given an absurd example -- tells us little about the actual sounds to be heard.

"... I rarely think in any kind of meditative terms as regards music..."
I understand completely. FWIW, I don't really think that musicians think in these terms either, at least not in the moment of practice. In fact, I really have no idea what improvising musicians are thinking -- if they are "thinking" (cause and effect, calculation, reification... quotidian stuff) in any conventional sense of the word -- as they improvise. Come to think of it myself, I suppose I could read your reservations re: conduction as being reservations about having to move between two perhaps incompatible modes of thought when dealing with conducted improvisation. Conduction as intrusion or disruption. In any event, if musicians do think in philosophical terms about what it is they do, I suspect it must only be after, or preparatory to, the event of music making itself. I'm reminded of something a friend of mine said once, if not to me, which is that writers write, in part, in order not to have to describe what is written. So to with musicians, I think, making music in place of describing or explaining the music itself. But, as your own instance of writing has begun to do, if one of the things all of us participating in this site can do via collaborative effort is to document as well as to gloss how improvising musicians think while improvising, then I believe we will have made an important contribution.

Hm, that's rather an odd passage from the Cook/Morton. They're talking about "instrumentalism" (the polarity I think they have in mind is between the idea of the instrument as a foregrounded, material sound resource, vs. the idea of the instrument as an expressive conduit for a preexisting musical content) rather than matters of "ego" exactly: I'm pretty sure they're thinking of the extensive debate about these themes staged in Derek Bailey's book on improvisation, where Ronnie Scott is the voice speaking for the "conduit of sound" idea & if I remember rightly Steve Lacy speaks for the other side of the polarity. But if this is what Cook & Morton have in mind then it's hard to see why they've put in the phrase "idiomatically delimited" in the description of the side of the polarity to which Bailey's book strongly leans (since Bailey's book is also a polemic in favour of "nonidiomatic improvisation"). So in the end I don't quite fathom what they're trying to say: I wish they'd said a little more in that spot.

It's quite possible to avoid violent language in talking of such ideas as "egolessness". Charles Tomlinson I think uses the term "self-forgetfulness"; another, slightly different approach to the idea would be that the self is not asserted. I suspect that such negations or unwritings are the closest approach to the idea one can get in the language.

I generally see denial of the self as inaction - holding back from something - or as subsuming oneself to the will of someone else. If everyone is subsuming themselves to something (the ensemble, the group?), that implies that all parties are holding back from something. Although it's difficult to quantify this, the performances where all members of the group seem to be trying to subsume their egos as much as possible are the least successful for me.

I understand that the original use of the term was to describe the inability of most (any?) listeners, sometimes including the musicians themselves, to determine which instrument (and therefore ego) was making a sound. This doesn't rule out the possibility that when listening to a recording, two strong egos may be heard, it just means that it may be difficult to identify which is which. Using extended technique it's possible to make very similar sounds with various acoustic and electronic instruments, its also possible to make very different (and equally unrecognisable) sounds with those instruments. Some performances consist of people trying to match each other as closely as possible - difficult to do technically, but for me, musically similar to call and response, none of the complexity of relationship that can be had when there is some kind of tension between the various musicians. This doesn't require displays of ego, just a degree of autonomy that may still be difficult to pick up when listening.

I think a distinction has to be made between unidentifiable source and everyone sounding the same. There's a connotation with egoless that implies not fully engaging with the process, an unwillingness to commit fully, some music falling under this label sounds very much like that, some music definitely doesn't.

Nate -- as the context for the passage I cited is Cook and Morton re: Keith Rowe, the only guess I have would be that, from a certain perspective, Derek Bailey still employs relatively conventional instrumental technique. (To my ears, there is still soemthing very Tristano School-like about his "unadorned" tone and the internal rhythms of his phrasing.) So that the technical resources still circumscribe the musical locutions, no matter how far Bailey's improvisatory parole departs from orthodox langue.

Of course, Bailey's "nonidiomatic" stance is one that has also allowed him to participate in musical situations which are easily recognizable as idiomatic, from Arcana (the Tony Williams / Bill Laswell power trio) to his collaborations with South African musicians and interpretations of American popular standards. No idioms = all idioms? Is Bailey in pursuit of a meta-language?

But its been quite a while since I read IMPROVISATION, so I can only ground this speculation so well.

Nat -- "the complexity of relationship". I really like this expression. I think this is, ultimately, what "it" is all about. Relationships develop in motion, less os in stasis. But even fear or reluctance to commit proposes its own relationshsip(s).

I believe I introduced the term "egoless" at the old JC, basically as a way to try to explain to naysayers what I was talking about and what differentiated it from other styles of free improvisation. it's obviously not an ideal term.

Nat says, I assume about the LIO:

"the performances where all members of the group seem to be trying to subsume their egos as much as possible are the least successful for me."

hmm, this is interesting. I was going to chime in here sooner, but I wasn't sure how relevant my thoughts were previously. most of my experience in dealing with big bands of free improvisers is with MIMEO, so my opinions about these matters are filtered through that experience.

with MIMEO, it's exactly the opposite, and when everyone manages to subsume their ego is normally when it works the best. the most successful show they've ever played (and most likely ever will, I remain dubious that we'll hear any more from this group) is the 24 hour long show at the Musique Action festival, I believe in May 2000. there was no conduction, but there was a structure imposed on different segments, 1 hour was a tribute to Rothko in which every member was instructed to find a frequency and hold it for the whole set, 1 segment was a Malfatti-like minimal piece, in which each member was only allowed to play a certain number of notes, etc. the non-concept segments were either full 12tet improvs or smaller group ones, but almost all of them were very successful, largely because the musicians all knew they'd have a chance, at some point within the 24 hours, to say everything they wanted to say. thus, everyone was very relaxed and the pacing wasn't hurried at all. in contrast, many shorter MIMEO sets degenerate into chaos, because the adrenaline of 12 musicians, who are normally used to playing solo or small-group sets, and who rarely are able to convene in this exciting 12tet of their peers, pushes them into a big mess. the Caravaggio piece also avoided this, by having a strict concept, although most of the musicians weren't too happy about it at the time.

Re: MIMEO - I just saw a Gert-Jan Prins concert and asked him about MIMEO - he said they had plans to perform in London later this year. FWIW.

Jon,

I think there's a difference between group playing and subsuming one's ego. My only reference point for MIMEO is the duo with Tilbury. I may not be able to distinguish who's making what sound, but there are distinguishable sounds there to be heard, which assumes the presence of ego/self.It sounds like there's a lot of conflict going on in that performance, which I thought was the idea - Tilbury/Fuhler, laptops, analog synths etc.

Egoless, and I know why you use the term, sounds to me like zen - selflessness, or the kind of ritualised playing that aims to remove all conflict or tension - the subsumation of the ego to a larger group. Much the same as 30 violins in an orchestra have to look and sound like one.

For there to be any kind of communication, the self has to be engaged, at least at some level, otherwise what is there to communicate with apart from the recesses of your own mind.

My comment about the success of the performances, was much more about "egoless improv" than the LIO - since most small group electro-acoustic improv is free improvised (for it to be improv at least). For me there has to be some engagement for there to be any meaningful communication (or lack of communication). Egolessness, for me anyway, means negating action and choice in music making, releasing any form of control to the "ensemble". With most successful performances there has to be both an awareness of oneself is doing, and also that relinquishment to the other members of the ensemble - but the balance, and the inherent tensions which maintain that balance are what makes it important.

In some of the records in this genre, it may be impossible to tell who's making the sounds at least without reference to other recordings and some technical knowledge, but you can still tell that people are making those sounds, and in most cases that different people are making them. That implies a kind of engagement that isn't present in some of the more mystical performances (in any genre) I've seen.

Obviously record with Tilbury, not duo.

It is nice to see that my work (conduction) has stimulated so much activity and correspondence....
www.conduction.us