While the frameworks and “rules” observed by improvising musicians are often culturally based and mediated the act of musical improvisation, using instruments and the body to generate sound, is ultimately individual. My own ongoing study about, practice of, and writing on improvisation is focused on attaining a clearer understanding of the individual improviser. How does s/he generate unique materials in the moment? Where do the seeds for these unique musical ideas take root in the brain and how are we able to execute often rapid and sometimes elegant improvisations? When does cultural influence take control, and when does individual musical understanding dominate the improvisational moment?
This area of study touches on diverse fields from composition, music theory, and ethnomusicology to cognitive science, biomechanics, neurological function, and anthropology. As an active performer and improviser my current research focuses on finding new methods and techniques for accessing improvisational “flow” both as a soloist and in group settings. These new methods include pedagogical, performance based, and philosophically informed processes and are largely informed by a desire to “tap” the large amount of received musical data each improviser holds in their mind.
This received musical information, from heard music to experience with practice, performance, and cultural interaction must be both similarly and uniquely understood by individual musicians, allowing us to improvise in a style similarly enough that others may “understand” our improvisation even while we improvise in a way that is uniquely our own.
As a performer I am experienced with a range of improvisational traditions in the U.S, and the frameworks for improvisation developed by African-American musicians in the 20th C serve as both inspiration and departure point. How can improvisational music be advanced today? What lies beyond the elegant and burnished improvisational forms found in jazz music? Often such questions are answered with music that eschews tonality, “standard” instrumental techniques, and/or pulse based rhythms, an approach that, while fully valid, also leaves many listeners stranded in a musical landscape with no familiar landmarks. Much of my own work as an improviser has just this featureless quality, but my hope is that further development will show a way towards new improvisational music that is culturally accessible and fresh. Let’s find a new sound!
