Forum: Improvisation Author(s): Barney Childs, Christopher Hobbs, Larry Austin, Eddie Prevost, Keith Rowe, Derek Bailey, Harold Budd, Lee Kaplan, Vinny Golea, Elliott Schwartz, Larry Solomon, Malcolm Goldstein, John Silber, Davey Williams, Pauline Oliveros Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 21, No. 1/2, (Autumn, 1982 - Summer, 1983), pp. 26- 111 Published by: Perspectives of New Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/832868 Accessed: 23/07/2008 16:10 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pnm. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org FORUM: IMPROVISATION The following is the first part of a gatheringof statements and interviews on the topic of improvisation.We have in no way tried to be encyclopedic;we have instead been selective, providing material of historicalinterest as well as illuminativeof the range of current practice,to enliven as well as enlighten. Interviewswere transcribeddirectly from tape, this transcript then being sent back to the originatorfor editing. What appears here, therefore,is what composers/performerswish to have appear. The interviewer'swords are italicized. Although we provide no bibliography,we urge the interested reader to investigate Derek Bailey'sbook, Improvisation(Ashbourne, England:Moorland Publications, 1980). The remaininginterviews will appear in subsequent issues of this journal. BARNEYCHILDS University of Redlands CHRISTOPHERHOBBS London Drama Centre September 1982 LARRYAUSTIN Summer, 1963, was the beginning of the New Music Ensemble in Davis, California, experimenting with free group improvisation through that year, giving many concerts, demos and making a record. The next summer I went to Rome and, being very enthusiasticabout the new way of improvisingwe felt we had originated, carried its concepts to Europe. I came to be associated with a number of composers in Rome, chiefly FrancoEvangelisti, Aldo Clementi, Ivan Vandorand CorneliusCardew, as well as Americanexpatriates Frederick Rzewski, Bill Smith,John Eaton, Allan Bryant,and Alvin Curran.In the fall of that Roman sabbaticalyear, I began to receive tapes from the Davis NME, "Here'swhat we're doing now! Here's the concert we just had!"I played these tapes and the NME record for my new composer-friendsin Rome. Evangelisti,especially, embraced our improvisationconcept totally. Was there alreadyan improvisationthing going on there? No... at least not in the free sense we felt we were practicing.In termsof primacy of idea then, I may have brought this influence to Europe. My expectations were innocent enough: I thought it would just be interestingto them, or boring. They would ask me what was going on in Davis, California,and I would say, "Well, we're experimenting with free group improvisation.No scheme, no format, no pre-conceived concept but the group dynamic itself." Hearing the tapes or the record, they-mostly Franco-would say, "Ahh...but what process are you using?""Nothing, except how we feel about one another'splaying and responding to it in the moment."They'd say "Impossible!"And I wouldgo on to say, "No, I swear it's stand-upcomposing," instead of sit-down composing,my differentiation between the two ways of making music, the two kinds of composing. Improvisa- tion is stand-up, and "real"composing is sit-down. Franco,who claimed he had given up composing, calling it a contrivance, a manipulation, embraced this concept of improvisation,because it fit perfectlywith his non-composingstance. He told me, later in 1967, that composition was dead, that the whole "act"of sitting down to contrive a piece of music was decadent. For Franco, this came from a very strong ideological motivation. He was a Communist and, when thinkingas a composer, felt totallyat odds with himself, his culture and his socio- political beliefs. In improvisation he felt that music and ideology could be reconciled.I think that was probably the case with Cornelius Cardew as well. 28 Anyway, back to the story. I played my "tapesfrom home" for them. Francowas fascinated,saying, "Thisis it. I really believe!". .and he wanted immediatelyto form a similarimprovisation group. We did form the group, an internationalone. For instance,Ivan Vandor, a Hungarian,was the tenor saxophone player, that is, a composer who also played tenor saxophone. We were all composers who also played. That was how you got in. In the Davis group, there were people who never declared themselves composers (Jon Gibson, for instance) but who were, actually.In the Italiangroup, being a composerwas requisiteand more important than "justbeing a performer,"an elitist attitude that Francoconveniently over- looked. The day came for the firstsession of the Italiangroup. I retain a vivid impression. CorneliusCardew came to observe, heard the group and, in the later part of the session, joined in. Franco was an ecstatic priest of the session. We had lots of keyboards... pianos, organs... it was a huge ensemble. I played flugelhorn and string bass. There must have been ten people.. Clementi, Vandor, Evangelisti, Smith, Eaton, John Heineman, Cardew, Curran, Mario Bertoncini, myself. In such a huge ensemble you can't reconcile the differencesin approachamong the performerswho, as composers, are all trying to shape the piece in their own compositionalimage. The anomaly-funny now-was in what Franconamed the group: ILGRUPPO DI IMPROVISAZIONEDA NUOVA CONSONANZA,the new conso- nance improvisation group. To me, it had no consonance as a group, but perhaps that was what was "new" to the Italians. The concept for GINC was very idealistic, very romantic, and it seemed right in tune with what everyone wanted to do: very Italian, very anarchic, very diverse. I don't think we could ever have come to an agreement about anything, which was maybe its main charm. We had weekly sessions, which was about all that any of us could, I guess, abide. (Aldo and Franco argued a lot, and Aldo, frustrated, dropped out.) Was there any leader in the group, or was it just where everybody sat down and played? Like the Davis group, there was no recognized leadership. The group dynamic was the thing to sustain: individuals coming together to make music and react freely to one another. Wasn't it during that period in the '60s that the whole idea of group-ness began to take over in our society? Not only corrective consciousness-expanding groups, but also the reaffirmation of a group feeling in rock music? Yes, we were group-oriented. In fact, a psychologist named Harry Aron followed us around, writing about us and analyzing our behavior. I commented on that 29 phenomenon in an articlein the late '60s in the New YorkTimes, called "MusicIs Dead, Long Live Music."I talked about groups being the wave of the future. Actually it was a wave of the past. I had finally realizedwhat it was we had been doing: "Oh! So this is a 'group thing' we're doing!" So GINC gave a debut concert, and it was outrageous,which meant it was successful,well attended and supported by the state, the best thing you can do in Italy... be supported by the state. We had a whole concert to ourselves on the Nuova ConsonanzaFestival in the springof 1965. Evangelistiwas the festival entrepreneur,so it was no surprise that we were included. Since he had stopped composing, this improvisation thing was just right. He could sit out there and wail and not feel guilty about not composing.I've never thought of it in the politicalcontext until now, but Cardew certainlyhad to cope with the contradictionof elitist composing and ideological beliefs... and his ScratchOrchestra and AMM were, I've since learned, manifes- tations of that political stance. If you embrace a kind of musical anarchy,pretty soon you begin to think politically. I'm not sure that what he was doing then-what either of them were doing-directly gave rise or confirmed certain ideologies, but maybe there was some of that at work. FrederickRzewski, Alvin Curran,Allan Bryantand others who were members of MusicaElettronica Viva-formed a year later-were also present, not during the first sessions however. They were in Rome and they came to those concerts;I can'tbelieve that they weren't influenced by what we did. It'smarvelous to think that a California outfit had something to do with influencing Europeans and expatriateAmericans as early as 1964. After you'd been in Rome a year you came back, and the New Music Ensemble continued. Yes, they had made a second record while I was in Europe. When I came back, it seemed to me to be a changed group, but, then, I had changed as well... full of new influences... had a lot of new scores. A little side story: when I first met Cardew in Rome-at that first improvisation session-I knew who he was but didn't know his music very well.