Great Improvisation on Record

[Mandryka]

I’ll just mention the ones which have caught my attention so far, and I’ll certainly explore the other suggestions here.

1. The three compositions on Three Compositions (EEMHM) 2011. Crazy, wild music, full of life. Long pieces, not Feldman long but still, you have to be ready to give it an hour or so.

2. The duets with Roscoe Mitchell - all short (and all good)

3. The early recording called B-Xo/N-0-1-47a. (Somehow, maybe this is silly, but somehow I sense an influence of Darmstadt there - Stockhausen.)

4. Compositions 101 and 88 on Five Compositions (1988) - some really nice timbres, textures on 101.

Oh, and I’ve bought Graham Lock’s book Forces in Motion.

[Richard Barrett]

(Somehow, maybe this is silly, but somehow I sense an influence of Darmstadt there - Stockhausen.)

Braxton is quite vocal in his admiration of Stockhausen.

[Serial_Apologist]

Today I was bowled over by the second “side” (track 2) on this!



I’m using this Ph.D as my guide through the music

http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/4659/1/438075.pdf

Just wanted to say A HUGE THANKS for posting that link to Andrew Callingham's mega thesis on First Generation British Free Improvisation, which answers many of the issues I had been thinking about for a long time. It's taken me this long to acknowledge because it is so long, and I had to take it in stages.

There is much there that happens to concur with my own conclusions, though Callingham can be a bit repetitious and over-stressing of points at times, albeit in order to further substantiate positions taken earlier in the thesis. There is also a question as to why the specific musical influences adopted by the protagonists were the ones chosen from a musical point of view, and led to what he rightly (imv) characterises as a genre, with subdivisions. He could also have gone further - into the backdrop of the development and broadening out of left wing political theory and practice in the 1950s and 60s, and the context, which would have helped indicate Derrida as his "extra-mural" perspective of choice - (and... thanks to him for demystifying Derrida, btw!) - and added an extra dimension to the main argument used, namely of assessing the medium and its advocates in terms of consistency on its own grounds and principles. Only in the last section does he talk about the actual music, by way of detailed excerpts taken from recordings, which would have had to be done by halting listening to note down these details - by which point their relevance becomes detached from the main thrust of everything aforesaid. All that said, this was a brave and thoroughgoing exposition on its subject, one of the most authoritative to have been written, I would think.

[Joseph K]

Roscoe Mitchell is one of my favourite players though, he just keeps getting better. Recently I was particularly taken by the two albums entitled Conversations where he plays in a trio with Craig Taborn (keyboards) and Kikanju Baku (drums), a traditional-looking lineup on the face of it which goes in many unheard-of directions.

I have the first of these currently playing (and awaiting the second in the post).

I am thoroughly enjoying it already. Reminds me of Miles' late-60s/early 70s group(s) free playing - which was something I was looking for!

[Joseph K]

(and awaiting the second in the post)

Not long arrived and currently spinning.

[Joseph K]

Not long arrived and currently spinning.

... nearing the end now and it's shaping up to be even better than the first (I think I think this because there are more frenetic numbers in this one). I like Roscoe's synth-like tone here on what I think is a baritone sax: