Expanded...Labels?

During last class, the wrap up discussion of our attempts at improvisation at Choga surprised, and frankly, slightly disturbed me. In a class that I am taking with an amazing ethnographer, we are pushed to "get even MORE curious" about situations and worldviews that we encounter which differ vastly from our own.  Within these spaces for exchange, a true opportunity for verstehen (understanding) resides.

With my own quest for verstehen in mind, I want to interrogate our notions of labels:

Expanded Music through Improvisation: Does this require us to treat all of our improvisations in this class as Avant Garde?  I don't believe that playing angular, jagged lines makes me any more insightful or profound.  I worked deliberately toward constructing coherence in the improvisational piece with my colleagues, and I valued the experience greatly.  I was experiencing a constellation of very different approaches to feel, comping styles, and how individuals lay on the beat than what I'm used to within a strict genre. This was very instructive, and I stand by my choices to gravitate toward coherence.  Keith Jarrette is a very cohesive improviser.  His stuff straddles and blurs all kinds of boundaries between jazz and classical, but it still coheres.  I admire his playing greatly.

Saxophone: Does the presence of a saxophone imply a certain expectation that what is being played is jazz?  To me, the presence of some sort of groove-based improvisation does not make it default to being jazz.  Jazz improvisation (often) follows a very clearly delineated (and often complex) chord structure.  Are saxophones expected to always function as a melodic instrument, loud and commanding?  I am primarily a classical player (not that anyone accepts that label from a saxophonist, either), and do not aspire to sound like John Zorn or Ornette Coleman.  I know I was concerned about playing too intensely for the size of the room in Choga.   

Smooth Jazz: This label has many implications, some of which are perceived as derogatory in certain circles.  Smooth jazz is characterized by funky, slap basslines, wah-wah guitar, and commercial-sounding melodies largely restricted to a pentatonic or blues scale from bright, loud horn lines (typically trumpet or saxophone).  I wonder what experiences have led one of my classmates to categorize our efforts as "smooth jazz"?  

Process versus Product in Improvisation: Christopher Small notes a stark difference between Western and Eastern musics.  Western music is often intensely goal-oriented and dependent upon some sort of positionality in time.  For example, if it's a Mozart piece, we can track the beginning, development, and the end, which is often marked by a lot of V-I movement.  In music from Bali and other Eastern cultures, the music conspires to prolong and accentuate the present state.  It doesn't try to build momentum to a defined end.  Westerners' obsession with time is a social construction.  (This is especially difficult to navigate in my household sometimes! My husband's family [from India] takes a much more laissez-faire approach to time than my family does).    
 
Based upon the critique of my group's improvisation, I came away feeling subjected to a specific paradigm of boundaries or expectations that had been imposed after the fact.  This felt really arbitrary to me. These had not, to my knowledge, been previously expressed as parameters toward the improvisation exercise that we should have been aspiring to.  I am especially concerned for my colleagues who already don't feel comfortable improvising in any way, and believe that we should be mindful of different views on labels in how we frame our critiques.   

Improvisation and Illustration

I have been a fan of Bill Frisell for a long time.  His improvisations and compositions astonish me when they begin with complex harmonies and angular lines that gradually come into focus, culminating in a melody that I eventually recognize as a jazz standard or a piece of Americana.  He channels Ives and Copland as easily as he references Charlie Parker and John Lennon, or somehow, all of the above, simultaneously.  Everything he does is a ridiculously elaborate development section that gradually and meticulously reveals the exposition at the end.   

My husband and I have followed his career for a very long time now, and we see him live every chance we get.  We were fortunate to see him do a live collaboration with illustrator Jim Woodring.  The music rises to create scenes and landscapes to breathe life into drawings that venture into the macabre. 

Frisell is a very quiet, introspective genius, and I appreciate his innovative approach.  I have never heard more complex chord progressions, and his genuine, introverted nature appeals to me, even as critics don't always now what to make of him.

Dr. Gilbert's film screening at Choga, with its use of original music to pair with imagery, reminded me of this Bill Frisell performance.  I thought it would be fun to share this with the class.

Expanded Classroom

My time at NYU has been such a profound experience so far. After being out of school for 10 years, it is a joy to learn again, but in a very different way than before. The rigidity of my previous educational experiences have molded me into a rigid, inflexible state.  This time around in school, I feel as if I am awakening to see a very different world as it stands in front of me (well, at least as I see it!). Now, all kinds of boundaries are blurred in places where I've actively sought to maintain them, and I'm growing, despite my fears of blowing the doors off of my comfort zone!

When I arrived at Choga on Tuesday night, I was, frankly, exhausted and cranky.  I had been hosting a conference all day, and was tired and sore from moving timpani, chairs, music stands, and every other kind of equipment between buildings.  On my quest for a PhD, some days have been remarkably harder than others, and this was one of them.  I wasn't sure what to expect.

I've never walked into a class to experience an elaborate spread of artfully prepared food at the ready.  I was touched by the chef and staff's nurturing nature; they insisted that we try so many things (which were amazing), and take home the leftovers. I am especially touched by Dr. Gilbert's incredible hospitality and acumen for creating community.  There truly is nothing like sharing a meal together.  I got to know my classmates on a deeper level, and they are fun, fascinating, accomplished people.

I had such a great time jamming with my classmates, too.  I haven't been able to seriously engage with my saxophone in a very long time, due to the rigorous demands of my coursework.  Even though I almost never like what comes out of my instrument in an improvisatory exercise, I tried to let loose and focus more on the process than the product.  I'm striving to push through my own limitations here.

As I was leaving Choga and walking toward the train, my spirit felt so much lighter: transformed.  This night was a gift.  It is easy to forget about creativity and artistry in my current efforts to make it through each day right now, and I have compartmentalized that part of myself very effectively in this endeavor.  But you can lose something important of yourself in that process, too.  I haven't had a day off since August- and a deep fatigue is settling in.  Somehow, returning to that artistic side of me, and this HUMAN side of musicking with others, even just for 20 minutes, was profoundly restorative.  Perhaps this is the greatest lesson of all this year.

This is how you know the food is good

   

Time and Space

Last class, we equated time and space as being equally vital to music.  I'd think that time and space is also vital to a balanced life.  Each moment in our lives, be it triumph, or despair, seems to play out within the confines of certain parameters or contexts of our existence that only we, as individuals, can place the exact meaning of.  We need time and space to develop our minds, skills, and character.  

Everyone experiences the constraints of time and space within their lives- and this seems to be magnified in an urban environment.  There's never enough of time or space in the city, yet this is still the preferred space of many ambitious people who dare to follow their dreams.  Stephen Nachmanovitch, in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, notes "Sometimes we damn the limits, but without them art is not possible (p. 81)". 

This is an important revelation to me.  I find myself railing against the clock on most days, perpetually wishing for more time to do "better" work.  Would it truly be better? Nachmanovitch challenges me to question this. I have difficulty trusting in myself to deliver quality work if I don't have (what I consider to be) enough time to think it through.  This is problematic, though, because I realize that this style of working often relegates me to the role of perpetual editor rather than fearless creator. Some days (like today), there will never be enough time in the day, and yet I will still have to deliver something of substance.  My fear-based fixation on quality can be paralyzing at times.

"Working within the limits of the medium [in my case, time limits] forces us to change our own limits" (p. 84).  The very timing of this idea's entry into my consciousness is rather apropos!  I can't change how much time I have at my disposal, but I can strive to release my relentless quest for ever-illusive perfection.

I've been thinking about time and space a lot, and with that in mind, I filmed portions of a cab ride at dusk. I'm constrained by the limits of keeping a steady hand within the space of a speeding cab, but when I reviewed and edited my footage, I was struck by how time and space gets manipulated by a cabbie on a schedule.  Some stop signs and traffic lights impose a longer rest than others, and the driver will lunge forward recklessly in an effort to reclaim some of that missing time, much like a pianist might approach a Chopin work. 

Perhaps I can  create an improvisatory work out of some of this footage, where musicians and dancers could freely imitate the moods of the street scene in a tempo that corresponds to the cab speed, and come to rest on predetermined, tonal chord voicings for those pauses.  I'll have to think about this idea some more.

Border Crossings and Boundary Processes

As I work toward a conception of expanded music, I realize that our class readings, discussions, and introductions to contact improvisation are really pushing me to consider how my own personal borders are demarcated, and why.

Etienne Wenger's scholarly work in Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems defines boundaries as places where "competence and experience tend to diverge," noting the tension between these two elements is where the greatest potential for learning takes place.  He argues, "Radically new insights often arise at the boundaries between communities" (Wenger, 2000, pp. 233-234). 

Wenger goes on to mention the importance of people acting as brokers to negotiating the boundaries between different social learning systems (2000, p. 235).  The success of an overarching social system depends on the strength of the bridge between each community of practice.

One stellar example of such a broker is Dr. Richard Kogan, a Juilliard-trained concert pianist and a Harvard-trained psychiatrist.  He walks the line between music and medicine to explore how creativity and well being intersect within the output of some of the world's most celebrated classical composers. 

I had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Kogan last Tuesday before his presentation on George Gershwin at Molloy College.  We had an interesting conversation about the practice of medicine as an art, the challenges imposed by a move toward hyper specialization within disciplines, and expanding the boundaries of conventional music education to encompass adult learning, which is a research interest of mine.  He believes, as do I, in the value and power of interdisciplinary boundary crossing. 

This notion for is well-supported by Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, who warns "...technique can get too solid- we can become so used to knowing how it should be done that we become distanced from the freshness of today's situation" (p. 67).  Nachmanovitch further inspires with the observation, "The only road to strength is vulnerability" (p. 64). It is essential that we all examine our own positions on the vulnerability scale and see how we can find the freshness in our own present.

Community Engagement

When Dr. Gilbert was discussing embodiment this evening, and I saw this on a friend's Facebook page, it made me think about the concept of embodiment with audience members as well.

I think this is an amazing way to engage the audience- and the guest conductors do an admirable job of improvisation through movement!  This is also especially compelling because it provides a very different way for an audience member to experience and interact with a performance.  This represents an open access concept that I find very appealing.

Of Poetry and Improvisation...

Mastery masters

Translucent path dissolving

Schism near complete

 

I don’t think I’ve written a poem in 15 years, which leads me to inquire about the nature of creativity and the human spirit.  What is it about creativity that is so effortless to access in childhood, yet eludes so many of us in adulthood? 

Improvisation can be free, conditional, contingent, and/or institutionalized.  Improvisation manifests in many ways, from intentional invention (fabricating something of meaning or utility from various materials, sometimes related, sometimes not) to spontaneous invention.  Often it stands on the shoulders of prior creative endeavors, as David Elliott claims. As a musician, I view improvisation as a powerful means of music making and a conduit for human engagement. Well, at least, what I think improvisation SHOULD be.  Truthfully, when I think of what improvisation means within the realm of my own musical upbringing (and probably that of most American music conservatories), I think about pressure to “make all of the changes” and show that I understand the stylistic nuances of the genres that I am playing in.  It’s very challenging to be creative in such an environment, where everyone’s improvisation exists as an effort to convince other musicians, our peers, of our competence. 

In an article entitled “Culture as Disability,” McDermott and Varenne explore the notion that disability is, itself, a cultural fabrication.  They suggest that people who are labeled as disabled are only so in relation to the context of which the prevailing culture is disabling. I find this fascinating, and see many parallels to musicians and barriers to improvisation.

When I was eight years old, I learned the melody to “Angel Eyes” from a recording, because I was inspired by it. I was so excited to play it for my band teacher in school.  After I played, he was horrified and admonished me, telling me “From now on, I only want to hear music that’s written on the page.”  While this incident didn’t completely deter me from improvisation, I still approach the task with great trepidation. There are many phenomenal musicians walking this earth who would react with terror if asked to improvise.  Many classically-trained musicians, in a sense, may be "culturally disabled".  It’s time to reshape the culture and unlock some doors.

On that note, I would highly recommend this track from Janelle Monae’s new album, Electric Lady, “Dorothy Dandridge Eyes” (song starts at 0:58:28, improvised solo starts at 1:01:02).  It is a pop/r&b/1970s soul-inspired tune with a very impressive vocal improvisation in the middle from Esperanza Spalding.  I am very taken with Janelle Monae’s innovative, expansive approach to music and plan to talk about her more this semester.