Irréductibles défenseurs de la composition improvisée à New York

Pras, Amandine

doi:10.21083/csieci.v10i2.3341

Cited by 4 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(5 reference statements)

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“…For example, he judged There was a fair amount of preconceived stuff as negative within this community, and There was drama and a sort of storyline as positive. These judgments are consistent with characterizations by free jazz improvisers in this community that free jazz improvisation should not give listeners the feeling that the musical material has been prepared, and that free jazz improvisation should sound like “an instantaneous composition” that shows formal coherence (Pras, 2015a ).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As demonstrated in Pras' ( 2015a , b ) semi-directed interviews with 12 New York-based professional touring improvisers (all from different geographical, cultural, musical, and instrumental backgrounds but within the same local performance community), different practitioners can have different preferences for what the genre should be called, as well as different ideas about what it encompasses and what is prioritized. For example, while some performers reject the idea that free jazz is an idiom at all, pianist Matthew Shipp claimed that over time, free jazz had become an idiom, with “a few gestural things that performers pick up on pretty closely” (Pras, 2015a ). Several improvisers rejected the “free jazz” label as not reflecting their values; drummer Todd Capp mentioned that “free jazz” has in the past sometimes been associated with “loud aggressive egocentric macho music” (Pras, 2015a ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, while some performers reject the idea that free jazz is an idiom at all, pianist Matthew Shipp claimed that over time, free jazz had become an idiom, with “a few gestural things that performers pick up on pretty closely” (Pras, 2015a ). Several improvisers rejected the “free jazz” label as not reflecting their values; drummer Todd Capp mentioned that “free jazz” has in the past sometimes been associated with “loud aggressive egocentric macho music” (Pras, 2015a ). These are plausible reasons for why many improvisers prefer using “free improvisation” or just “jazz,” or alternatively “spontaneous composition.” Here we will use “free jazz improvisation” because it seems the most general in the community of artists that we are working with, though we recognize that the terms are contested.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What is known about performers' shared understanding in free jazz improvisation? The variability of performers' characterizations of their own improvisational process in Pras' ( 2015a , b ) qualitative interview analyses suggests that performers' understandings may differ substantially. In those interviews, some performers claimed avoiding thinking when they are improvising, while others described intense and controlled thought processes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What About Their Performance Do Free Jazz Improvisers Agree Upon? A Case Study

2017

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When musicians improvise freely together—not following any sort of script, predetermined harmonic structure, or “referent”—to what extent do they understand what they are doing in the same way as each other? And to what extent is their understanding privileged relative to outside listeners with similar levels of performing experience in free improvisation? In this exploratory case study, a saxophonist and a pianist of international renown who knew each other's work but who had never performed together before were recorded while improvising freely for 40 min. Immediately afterwards the performers were interviewed separately about the just-completed improvisation, first from memory and then while listening to two 5 min excerpts of the recording in order to prompt specific and detailed commentary. Two commenting listeners from the same performance community (a saxophonist and drummer) listened to, and were interviewed about, these excerpts. Some months later, all four participants rated the extent to which they endorsed 302 statements that had been extracted from the four interviews and anonymized. The findings demonstrate that these free jazz improvisers characterized the improvisation quite differently, selecting different moments to comment about and with little overlap in the content of their characterizations. The performers were not more likely to endorse statements by their performing partner than by a commenting listener from the same performance community, and their patterns of agreement with each other (endorsing or dissenting with statements) across multiple ratings—their interrater reliability as measured with Cohen's kappa—was only moderate, and not consistently higher than their agreement with the commenting listeners. These performers were more likely to endorse statements about performers' thoughts and actions than statements about the music itself, and more likely to endorse evaluatively positive than negative statements. But these kinds of statements were polarizing; the performers were more likely to agree with each other in their ratings of statements about the music itself and negative statements. As in Schober and Spiro (2014), the evidence supports a view that fully shared understanding is not needed for joint improvisation by professional musicians in this genre and that performing partners can agree with an outside listener more than with each other.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

What About Their Performance Do Free Jazz Improvisers Agree Upon? A Case Study

2017

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L’échantillonnage dans l’improvisation : Rencontre de deux instigateurs du free jazz avec un jeune artiste de la scène noise à New York

Pras

Lavergne

2015

Musicae Scientiae

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Dans cet article, nous rapportons une étude expérimentale qui a amené deux instigateurs du free jazz, le batteur Todd Capp et le multi-instrumentiste Daniel Carter, à rencontrer musicalement Mikey Holmes, un jeune artiste de la scène noise à New York en mai 2014. À travers une analyse du processus d'improvisation de ces trois musiciens, l'étude traite de la continuité tant sociale qu'artistique entre différents genres et différentes générations de l'improvisation. Les deux rencontres musicales ont été filmées et enregistrées pour provoquer l'auto-évaluation de la part des musiciens entre chacune des improvisations. Nous incluons deux vidéos dans le présent article pour partager le résultat musical de ces rencontres avec le lecteur. En s'appuyant sur les citations des musiciens, nous abordons les thèmes du temps de la performance et de l'enregistrement, de l'utilisation de sons contextuels, de la trans-musicalité, de l'improvisation libre et des liens entre musique et politique à New York entre les géants du jazz de la fin des années 50 et la musique improvisée d'aujourd'hui. À travers ces thèmes, nous établissons une relation entre la subversivité d'une musique et sa résistance au temps, et nous supposons qu'il existe un lien entre la pérennité des productions musicales enregistrées et leurs conditions de réalisation en studio. Grâce à cette approche méthodologique interdisciplinaire, nous confrontons l'art d'échantillonner à la performance improvisée et nous interrogeons le caractère social et politique contenu à l'intérieur d'une improvisation. Mots clefsenregistrement musical, free jazz, improvisation libre, musique et politique, noise AbstractIn this paper we report on an experimental study that brought two free jazz instigators, the drummer Todd Capp and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, to musically meet Mikey Holmes, a young noise artist in New York in May 2014. Throughout an analysis of the improvisation process of these three musicians, our study addresses both the social and artistic continuity between different improvisation genres and generations. The two improvisation meetings have been filmed and recorded to allow musicians' selfevaluation. We include two videos in the article to share the musical result of these meetings with the readers. We use musicians' quotes to shed light on issues ranging from performance and recording time, the use of contextual sounds, transmusicality, free improvisation and the links between music and politics in New York between the late fifties' jazz giants and today's improvised music. Thanks to the issues tackled, we show how the subversiveness of a particular music and its resistance to time are related, and we suggest there is a link between the sustainability of musical recordings and their conditions of studio production. Our interdisciplinary approach allows us to confront the art of sampling with improvised performance and to question the social and political aspects included in an improvisation.

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Connecting Free Improvisation Performance and Drumming Gestures Through Digital Wearables

et al. 2021

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High-level improvising musicians master idiosyncratic gesture vocabularies that allow them to express themselves in unique ways. The full use of such vocabularies is nevertheless challenged when improvisers incorporate electronics in their performances. To control electronic sounds and effects, they typically use commercial interfaces whose physicality is likely to limit their freedom of movement. Based on Jim Black's descriptions of his ideal digital musical instrument, embodied improvisation gestures, and stage performance constraints, we develop the concept of a modular wearable MIDI interface to closely meet the needs of professional improvisers, rather than proposing a new generic instrument that would require substantial practice to adapt improvisational techniques already acquired. Our research draws upon different bodies of knowledge, from theoretical principles on collaboration and embodiment to wearable interface design, in order to create a digital vest called Track It, Zip It (TIZI) that features two innovative on-body sensors. Allowing for sound control, these sensors are seamlessly integrated with Black's improvisational gesture vocabulary. We then detail the design process of three TIZI prototypes structured by the outcomes of a performance test with Black, a public performance by a novice improviser during the 2017 International Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, and measurements of sensor responses. After commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of the final TIZI prototype, we discuss how our interdisciplinary and collective process involving a world-class improviser at the very center of the design process can provide recommendations to designers who wish to create interfaces better adapted to high-level performers. Finally, we present our goals for the future creation of a wireless version of the vest for a female body based on Diana Policarpo's artistic vision.

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Irréductibles défenseurs de la composition improvisée à New York

Cited by 4 publications

References 8 publications

What About Their Performance Do Free Jazz Improvisers Agree Upon? A Case Study

What About Their Performance Do Free Jazz Improvisers Agree Upon? A Case Study

L’échantillonnage dans l’improvisation : Rencontre de deux instigateurs du free jazz avec un jeune artiste de la scène noise à New York

Connecting Free Improvisation Performance and Drumming Gestures Through Digital Wearables

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