I’m interested in musical improvisation; all my musical efforts and passion are geared to spontaneous creation of music; but not simply free improvisation – as it became known e.g. with free jazz, psychedelic rock or contemporary “classic” music – many times chaotic and a pain for the audience; instead my intent is to make improvised music sound as if it was properly composed and arranged in a pleasant style; I would rather call this real-time composition instead of improvisation.
Imagine a roundtable discussion; nobody would ask for a score or script; nevertheless the discussion can be interesting and entertaining to watch; we take this for granted. On the other hand it is commonly assumed that a score is an essential requisite for playing music, even more when several musicians are involved; this might be a result or our classical music education.
I see music as a kind of communication between people – a communication of emotions and feelings instead of words; if the musicians mesh well with each other, they should be able to do entertaining and aesthetical musical communication for hours without a score; why shouldn’t they by themselves be able to sponaneously build musical structures and arcs of suspense? It might well be a matter of talent, but it is surely a matter of practice and culture.
Of course I like classical music and I very much admire and respect the professional skills of classical musicians; I have a lot of classical CDs and enjoy classical concerts; but if I play music myself I rather like to create and not to rehearse; we’re living in a wonderful time where we can listen to music without going to a concert or being forced to practice ourselves the piece we want to hear; instead we can record any music and distribute and replay it in electronic form; this luxury allows us to conserve unique musical moments without putting them to scores. Composers like Chopin, who were also great musical improvisers, would love our today’s possibilities; it’s not unlikely that they wouldn’t have written scores if they lived today.
To sum up: my focus is to create music – either solo or together with my friends – and to do it live without retakes or overdubs, and with no compositions or arrangements in advance; I like any music style as long as it is interesting and aesthetic; as a musician I am very happy to please my audience, and as an improviser I’m more than happy and satisfied if my audience doesn’t believe that everything was just live and improvised 😉
Recent Comments