I´m not telling about the members long experience from European freejazz, to brag, in your words; as a "cock contest". I do that just to let you know that we know what we are doing. And you obviously don´t, since you continue to say that there is no "jazz" in our music, and we should stay true to the canon, the idiom, the tradition. That´s a conservative take on a music form that is absolute progressive. It is still called freejazz in Europe, probably because of the improvised style, and many of those who played it came from the jazz scene (Han Bennink had even played with Wes Montgomery when Wes visited Holland in the early 1960s, but today Benninks drumming is very very strange).
However: we play non-idiomatic music, free music where there is no canon, no tradition and no place for the jazz police. I told you about Harald Stenströms thesis Free Ensemble Improvisation from 2009, and here´s the abstract. You can find the whole dissertation as a pdf-file at Gothenburg University, or I can mail it to you if you´re interested.
ABSTRACT
Title: Free Ensemble Improvisation
Language: English
Keywords: aleatorics, artistic research, attractor state, central tone, chaotic systems, collective
understanding, comprovisation, conceptual model, directed motion, ensemble size,
feedback and feedforward, free ensemble improvisation, gesture, importance of rhythm,
indeterminacy, interactional skill, listening skill, musical evaluation, musical interaction,
musical maturity, musical chemistry, musical interpretation, musical composition, nonidiomatic
improvisation, rhythmic flow, sound properties, stylistic influences
ISBN: 978-91-977757-8-6
The aim of this doctoral project has been to study so-called non-idiomatic improvisation
in ensembles consisting of two or three musicians who play together without any
restrictions regarding style or genre and without having predetermined what is to be
played or how they should play.
The background to this thesis has been the author’s own free improvising, which he
has pursued since 1974, and the questions that have arisen whilst music-making. The
thesis takes three of these questions as its point of departure:
– what is free ensemble improvisation, what characterizes free ensemble improvisation
and how can it be defined
– how does free ensemble improvisation relate to:
– – instrumental technique
– – idiomatic improvisation and stylistic influences
– – composition
– – interpretation
– – aleatorics and indeterminacy
– – different types of sytems (e.g. biological, social, dynamic/chaotic systems)
– what might a conceptual model as a theoretical base for free ensemble improvisation
look like?
The artistic/performative part of this research project has primarily consisted of public
concerts, as a result of longer/shorter periods of cooperation with four permanent and a
number of temporary (ad hoc) ensembles.
The results provide a better understanding of what free ensemble improvisation is,
in what respects it differs from other forms of music-making and how it can be defined.
Free ensemble improvisation’s relations to the points mentioned above were found to
be more multifaceted than expected. However, it was possible to attain a basic twolayered
conceptual model as a theoretical base for free ensemble improvisation and, in
its extension, as a basis for the analysis of free ensemble improvisation.
The study includes numerous concert projects, of which several are recorded and included
in this book on two CDs with MP3 files.