Free improvisation

{{Short description|Music genre}} {{Distinguish|Musical improvisation}}{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}} {{Infobox music genre | name = Free improvisation | other_names = * Free improv * free form music * free music * free form improvisation | stylistic_origins = *Free jazz * avant-garde jazz * 20th-century classical * serialism * indeterminacy | cultural_origins = Mid-1960s United Kingdom, United States, and Europe | derivatives = *Electroacoustic improvisation | subgenrelist = | subgenres = | fusiongenres = | regional_scenes = | local_scenes = | other_topics = *Aleatoric music * ambient music * experimental rock * glitch music * noise music * post-rock * progressive music * psychedelia }}

'''Free improvisation''' (also known as '''free-form music''') is a form of improvised music centered on a commitment to non-idiomatic musical expression.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Quietus |first=The |date=2021-10-12 |title=The Strange World of… Derek Bailey |url=https://thequietus.com/interviews/strange-world-of/derek-bailey/ |access-date=2025-12-06 |website=The Quietus |language=en-GB}}</ref> It developed through free jazz, serialism and indeterminacy, and is characterized by a general rejection of formal music theory and tonality, instead following the intuition of its performers and the exploration of dynamic, timbre and texture. The term can refer to both a technique—employed by any musician in any genre—and as a recognizable genre of experimental music in its own right.

Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed primarily in the U.K. as well as the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz and contemporary classical music. Exponents of free improvised music include the improvising groups AMM and Spontaneous Music Ensemble, as well as solo instrumentalists such as saxophonists Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brötzmann and John Zorn, trombonist George E. Lewis, guitarists Derek Bailey, Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith, Taku Sugimoto and Toshimaru Nakamura, bassists Damon Smith and Jair-Rohm Parker Wells, and composer Pauline Oliveros.

== Characteristics == In the context of music theory, free improvisation denotes the shift from a focus on harmony and structure to other dimensions of music, such as timbre, texture, melodic intervals, rhythm and spontaneous musical interactions between performers. This can give free improvised music abstract and nondescript qualities.<ref>{{cite book|title=Jazz|year=2009|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company, Inc|author=Scott DeVeaux and Gary Giddins|edition=first}}</ref> Although individual performers may choose to play in a certain style or key, or at certain tempos, conventions such as song structures are highly uncommon; more emphasis is generally placed on the mood of the music, or on performative gestures, than on preset forms of melody, harmony or rhythm. These elements are improvised at will as the music progresses, and performers will often intuitively react to each other based on the elements of their performance.

English guitarist Derek Bailey described free improvisation as "playing without memory".<ref>{{cite magazine | url=https://www.allaboutjazz.com/free-improvisation-evan-parker-by-john-eyles | title=Free Improvisation | last=Eyles | first=John | date=10 August 2005 | magazine=All About Jazz | access-date=2008-04-04}}</ref> In his book ''Improvisation'', Bailey wrote that free improvisation "has no stylistic or idiomatic commitment. It has no prescribed idiomatic sound. The characteristics of freely improvised music are established only by the sonic musical identity of the person or persons playing it."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cortical.org/dbfree.html|title=Free Improvisation|last=Bailey|first=Derek|author-link=Derek Bailey (guitarist)|publisher=Cortical Foundation|access-date=2008-04-04|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080605044808/http://www.cortical.org/dbfree.html|archive-date=5 June 2008}}</ref>

Free music performers from disparate backgrounds often engage musically with other genres. For example, Italian composer Ennio Morricone was a member of the free improvisation group Nuova Consonanza. Anthony Braxton has written opera, and John Zorn has written acclaimed orchestral pieces.

== History == Though there are many important precedents and developments, free improvisation developed gradually, making it difficult to pinpoint a single moment when the style was born. Free improvisation primarily descends from the Indeterminacy movement and free jazz.

Guitarist Derek Bailey contends that free improvisation must have been the earliest musical style, because "mankind's first musical performance couldn't have been anything other than a free improvisation." Similarly, Keith Rowe stated, "Other players got into playing freely, way before AMM, way before Derek [Bailey]! Who knows when free playing started? You can imagine lute players in the 1500s getting drunk and doing improvisations for people in front of a log fire.. the noise, the clatter must have been enormous. You read absolutely incredible descriptions of that. I cannot believe that musicians back then didn't float off into free playing. The melisma in Monteverdi {{sic}} must derive from that. But it was all in the context of a repertoire."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/rowe.html|title=Keith Rowe|last=Warburton|first=Dan|date=January 2001|publisher=Paris Transatlantic Magazine|access-date=2008-04-04}}</ref>

The London-based independent radio station Resonance 104.4FM, founded by the London Musicians Collective, frequently broadcasts experimental and free improvised performance works. WNUR 89.3 FM ("Chicago's Sound Experiment") is another source for free improvised music on the radio. Taran's Free Jazz Hour broadcast on Radio-G 101.5 FM, Angers and {{ill|Euradio|fr}} 101.3 FM, Nantes is entirely dedicated to free jazz and other freely improvised music. A l'improviste.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://sites.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/em/improviste/pres.php?e_id=13 |title=A l'improviste – Paul Rogers, contrebasse. Concert enregistrι ΰ Radio France le 14 janvier – France Musique |publisher=Sites.radiofrance.fr |date=2012-06-28 |access-date=2012-08-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120428001104/http://sites.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/em/improviste/pres.php?e_id=13 |archive-date=28 April 2012 }}</ref>

=== Classical precedents === By the middle decades of the 20th century, composers such as Henry Cowell, Earle Brown, David Tudor, La Monte Young, Jackson Mac Low, Morton Feldman, Sylvano Bussotti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and George Crumb, re-introduced improvisation to European art music, with compositions that allowed or even required musicians to improvise. One notable example of this is Cornelius Cardew's ''Treatise'': a graphic score with no conventional notation whatsoever, which musicians were invited to interpret.

Improvisation is still commonly practised by some organists at concerts or church services, and courses in improvisation (including free improvisation) are part of many higher education programmes for church musicians.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hmtm-hannover.de/en/application/programmes-of-study/church-music-bmus/ |title=HMTM Hannover: Church Music (B.Mus.) |publisher=Hmtm-hannover.de |date=2011-12-30 |access-date=2012-08-03}}</ref>

=== International free improvisation === Since 2002 New Zealand collective Vitamin S has hosted weekly improvisations based around randomly drawn trios. Vitamin S takes the form beyond music and includes improvisers from other forms such as dance, theatre and puppetry.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.95bfm.com/assets/sm/187016/3/insidetrackepi4.mp3|title=Inside Track 2008: Episode 4|publisher=95bFM|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150904063006/http://www.95bfm.com/assets/sm/187016/3/insidetrackepi4.mp3|archive-date=4 September 2015}}</ref>

Since 2006, improvisational music in many forms has been supported and promoted by ISIM, the International Society for Improvised Music. ISIM comprises some 300 performing artists and scholars worldwide, including Pauline Oliveros, Robert Dick, Jane Ira Bloom, Roman Stolyar, Mark Dresser, and many others.

Founded in Manchester, England, in 2007, ''the Noise Upstairs'' has been an institution dedicated to the practice of improvised music,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thenoiseupstairs.com/about/|title=The Noise Upstairs – About|website=thenoiseupstairs.com|access-date=4 April 2018}}</ref> hosting regular concerts and creative workshops where they have promoted international and UK-based artists such as Ken Vandermark,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.manchesterscenewipe.co.uk/tag/ken-vandermark-trio/ |title=All things tagged as: Ken Vandermark Trio |access-date=2014-02-10 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20140214102548/http://www.manchesterscenewipe.co.uk/tag/ken-vandermark-trio/ |archive-date=14 February 2014}}</ref> Lê Quan Ninh, Ingrid Laubrock, and Yuri Landman. On top of these events, the Noise Upstairs runs monthly jam nights.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thenoiseupstairs.com/category/performances/|title=Performances – The Noise Upstairs|website=thenoiseupstairs.com|access-date=4 April 2018}}</ref>

In Berlin, Germany, from the 1990s onwards, a school of free improvisation emerged known as ''echtzeitmusik'' (‘real-time music’ or ‘immediate music’). This has been sustained by supportive venues such as ausland, Anorak Club, Labor Sonor, and others.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |title=reSource Chat with Gregor Hotz, ausland |url=https://2020.transmediale.de/sites/default/files/public/imce/nodes/resource/resource_chats/ausland.pdf |journal=ReSource |publisher=transmediale}}</ref>

=== The downtown scene === In late 1970s New York a group of musicians came together who shared an interest in free improvisation as well as rock, jazz, contemporary classical, world music and pop. They performed at lofts, apartments, basements and venues located predominantly in downtown New York (8BC, Pyramid Club, Environ, Roulette, The Knitting Factory and Tonic) and held regular concerts of free improvisation which featured many of the prominent figures in the scene, including John Zorn, Bill Laswell, George E. Lewis, Fred Frith, Tom Cora, Toshinori Kondo, Wayne Horvitz, Eugene Chadbourne, Zeena Parkins, Anthony Coleman, Polly Bradfield, Ikue Mori, Robert Dick, Ned Rothenberg, Bob Ostertag, Christian Marclay, David Moss, Kramer and many others. They worked with each other, independently and with many of the leading European improvisers of the time, including Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Misha Mengelberg, Peter Brötzmann and others. Many of these musicians continue to use improvisation in one form or another in their work.

=== Electronic free improvisation === Electronic devices such as oscillators, echoes, filters and alarm clocks were an integral part of free improvisation performances by groups such as Kluster at the underground scene at Zodiac Club in Berlin in the late 1960s.<ref>Alan and Steven Freeman: ''The Crack in the Cosmic Egg,'' Audion Publications, 1996, {{ISBN|0-9529506-0-X}}</ref> For the 1975 jazz-rock concert recording ''Agharta'', Miles Davis and his band employed free improvisation and electronics,<ref>{{cite news|last=Bayles|first=Martha|author-link=Martha Bayles|date=13 May 2001|title=Miles Davis: The Chameleon of Cool; an Innovator with Dueling Ambitions|newspaper=The New York Times|page=19}}</ref> particularly guitarist Pete Cosey who improvised sounds by running his guitar through a ring modulator and an EMS Synthi A.<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Trzaskowski|first=Andrzej|author-link=Andrzej Trzaskowski|year=1976|issue=40|magazine=Jazz Forum|title=Agharta|location=Warsaw|page=74}}</ref>

But it was only later that traditional instruments were disbanded altogether in favour of pure electronic free improvisation. In 1984, the Swiss improvisation duo Voice Crack started making use of strictly "cracked everyday electronics".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.for4ears.com/poire_z/about_poire_z.html |title=about poire_z_fr |publisher=For4ears.com |access-date=2012-08-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120716234951/http://www.for4ears.com/poire_z/about_poire_z.html |archive-date=16 July 2012}}</ref>

=== Electroacoustic improvisation === {{main|Electroacoustic Improvisation}}

A recent branch of improvised music is characterized by quiet, slow moving, minimalistic textures and often utilizing laptop computers or unorthodox forms of electronics.

Developing worldwide in the mid-to-late 1990s, with centers in New York, Tokyo and Austria, this style has been called ''lowercase music'' or EAI (electroacoustic improvisation), and is represented, for instance, by the American record label Erstwhile Records and the Austrian label Mego.

EAI is often radically different even from established free improvisation. Eyles writes, "One of the problems of describing this music is that it requires a new vocabulary and ways of conveying its sound and impact; such vocabulary does not yet exist – how do you describe the subtle differences between different types of controlled feedback? I've yet to see anyone do it convincingly – hence the use of words like 'shape' and 'texture'!"<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.allaboutjazz.com/4g-cloud-by-john-eyles|title=4g: cloud|last=Eyles|first=John|date=21 June 2006|magazine=All About Jazz|access-date=2008-04-04}}</ref>

== Legacy == Paul McCartney is anecdotally noted as having been an audience member for an AMM performance in 1967, and said that "they went on too long", although he did feel inspired by them.<ref>{{cite AV media notes |year=1996 |title=Laminal |type=liner notes |publisher=Matchless |id=MRCD31}}</ref> Additionally, Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd also sat in at early AMM performances, with Barrett later drawing influences from Keith Rowe's prepared guitar technique in his own psychedelic free-form playing on ''The Piper at the Gates of Dawn'' through the use of a zippo lighter as a guitar slide.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Bramesco |first=Charles |date=2023-07-19 |title='Nobody really knew what happened': tracing the life of Syd Barrett |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/19/syd-barrett-pink-floyd-documentary |access-date=2025-07-29 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref>

Free improvised music maintained a partial influence on the first wave of post-rock in the 1990s.<ref>{{cite web |last=Reynolds |first=Simon |date=May 1994 |title=Once More with Feeling |url=http://www.thewire.co.uk/out/1297_4.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20011202075606/http://www.thewire.co.uk/out/1297_4.htm |archive-date=2 December 2001 |access-date=8 July 2007 |website=The Wire}}</ref>

== References == <references />

== External links == * [http://www.isimprov.org International Society for Improvised Music] * [http://www.signaltonoisemagazine.org ''Signal to Noise'' magazine] A publication on avant-garde jazz and electro-acoustic improvisation * [http://intuitivemusic.dk/iima/legno1uk.htm Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen: "Experimental Improvisation Practise and Notation 1945–1999: An Annotated Bibliography"]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Free Improvisation}} Category:Free improvisation Category:Jazz genres Category:Jazz techniques Category:Jazz terminology