I was invited to contribute a piece to the Megaphone column for this month's All About Jazz-New York. I wouldn't say I'm exactly courting controversy, but let's say I might have shot controversy a few sly glances across a crowded room.
You can read it over at AAJ if you like, though I have also reproduced it here, below the fold, with (hopefully) illustrative audio clips. Comments welcome, as always.
Either/Or (No More)
You know that party game where you present people with a forced choice that’s actually a litmus test for distinguishing between two kinds of people? Here, let’s play — pick one (and only one): Matisse or Picasso? Federer or Nadal? The Daily Show or The Colbert Report?
Since I am a “jazz composer” by training and self-identification, it seems like I’m always being asked to play this game: improvisation or composition? I am not alone in this — every composer who allows the element of indeterminacy to inflect their music has to grapple with the tension between these two forces. But ever since I reluctantly left behind my former life as a jazz pianist in order to concentrate on composing for my own bigband, I find I’ve become (perhaps unsurprisingly) a lot more reflective about the role improvisation plays in shaping my music.
A big part of the reason why I shifted my focus from playing to composing is that I came to realize that I don’t actually have a deep-seated attachment to improvisation itself. I realize this sounds like a horrible, shameful admission — “ohmigod, how can you possibly say that? Don’t you understand that improvisation is what jazz is all about?” But see, the thing is, what matters to me is music, not process. I don’t care how someone gets there, just so long as they get there. Plus, at the risk of stating the obvious, there is an abundance of brilliant and meaningful music in the world that involves no significant improvisational element. (I am fairly certain you have some on your iPod.)
Instead of instigating an identity crisis, the realization that I didn’t believe in improvising for its own sake led me to think more carefully about what improvisation is actually good for. What can an improvising musician (or, better, what can this improvising musician) do that I can’t do as a composer? How can I create a setting that is conducive to the specific kind of improvisation I’m looking for?
Once I freed myself from the obligation to “leave room for blowing” (or for spontaneous thematic development, gesture-directed collective shaping, extemporaneously-determined form, or what have you) — I felt oddly liberated. Improvisation became a strategic choice instead of a habitual one. I deployed it only where the music seemed to demand it. I began to understand what Bob Brookmeyer had tried to impress upon me in our lessons: “The solo should only happen when absolutely nothing else can happen.”
So naturally, the first track on my debut recording as a composer-bandleader, Infernal Machines, opens with 45 seconds of unaccompanied improvisation.
Okay, before you sigh and roll your eyes: that electronically-processed cajón solo at the top of the cut in question, “Phobos,” happens because there is absolutely no other way to begin that tune. Honest, I swear! It turns out that allowing space for improvisation out front is the best way to introduce the unusual sound-world of the piece, and to establish a subtle sense of foreboding before the notated music begins. I could have instead opened the piece with a densely-notated electro-cajón showpiece for Jon Wikan, but then we would lose the feeling of the music being generated spontaneously from an initial spark. And Jon intuitively understands how to transition seamlessly from his open improvisation into the written music.
Later in “Phobos,” after introducing and developing the composed thematic material, we reach an arrival point that fairly screams to be followed up with some kind of improvised solo — specifically in this case, Mark Small’s tenor sax. But this is the most hazardous part of the piece, the point where we are most in danger of losing the thread and veering off into a conventional blowing-over-changes sound. After experimenting with a few different approaches, I found the best solution was for me to cue each chord in the progression, one by one. This allows me to keep my composerly hand in the game by shaping the harmonic phrasing in real time — some chords might last eleven bars, some might last three, and so on… it varies every time we play it. This keeps Mark on his toes, forcing him to adapt on the fly if I happen to cue the next chord change in a different spot from where he wants it. But that slightly unsettled feeling is exactly what’s needed at that point in the music. A lot of jazz musicians would chafe at these constraints, but I’m fortunate enough to be able to work with players who can channel their creativity towards the needs of the music, usually without an excess of scenery-chewing.
Paradoxically, it was only after I stopped treating improvisation as something that has to happen that I began to figure out how to harness it effectively and integrate it into the big picture. I developed a keen appreciation for the various ways in which improvisers can be guided, nudged, or prodded into coming up with ideas that will advance the musical narrative, or steered back on track when they are on the verge of taking the entire piece off the rails. It starts with musicians who are more interested in storytelling than showboating. But as a composer, it’s up to me to write music that will draw out those aspects of an improviser’s identity that I need in order to tell the kind of story I want to tell. When it works, the composition shapes the improvisation and the improvisation completes the composition, and no forced choice can pry them apart.
i love that you used the word "storytelling" in that last paragraph. i have never been drawn to showboating sport-jazz...the works of composers/improvisers more interested in telling stories (whether abstract or literal) always attracted me so much more.
thanks for writing this, man. this is great, thoughtful stuff that this community needs to hear.
Posted by: dave chisholm | 28 February 2010 at 01:56 PM
they say one choice is a psychosis, two is mere neurosis, and it seems to me John Cage clearly demonstrated how 'improvisation', like tonal gravity, is a continuum of liberties.
It is simply not possible to play the notes as written because it is not physically possible to play the same phrase or even the same note twice -- Cage was a founder of the first electronic music laboratory and one of their early findings involved recording a performer and then doubling the recording with the second playback shifted minutely from the other, the resulting phase-shift cliche effect is all too familiar to those of us of the Rock Generation, but dig, try as they might, they were unable to record the same line of music played twice and have the recordings line up enough to show any phase-shift effect. In (I think) A Year From Monday Cage reprints the lecture he gave during his European tour where he denounced Beethoven and Bach (or rather European music's obsessive striving for 'perfection' of repeatable performance) much to the chagrin of everyone ... except Stockhausen.
So clearly, unless the music is played by robots improvisation, ie the performer's personal and idiosyncratic input into the storytelling, is always present, so isn't it only a matter of degree and of the particular dimensions allowed to flex? Isn't the un-free aspect merely a network of do not cross lines that is placed (sometimes arbitrarily) by the concertmaster/composer as they take their shot at re-invigorating the piece?
And a question that fascinates me: At what point of flex does the piece cease to be 'true' to the composer's intention?
That said, I applaud your article for reminding us that arrangement and discipline are vital to the creation of powerful music, and I cannot help but relate your observations here with Andrew's Tale of Two Chickens in http://uglyrug.blogspot.com/2010/02/life-is-short.html a cautionary tale for those who would strive for liberty beyond their concertmaster's limits :)
Posted by: mrG | 28 February 2010 at 10:19 PM
sort of in line with what mrG says-
"improvisation is fast composition and composition is slow improvisation."
this seems like a really good way to begin to talk about the "differences" between these two armies(heh).
either/or (no more) indeed.
Posted by: matt field | 01 March 2010 at 11:59 AM
Thanks for sharing this little glimpse into how you think about your own compositions, Darcy.
"But see, the thing is, what matters to me is music, not process."
Is it that process doesn't matter to you, or that you are interested in carefully using specific processes toward musical ends (as opposed to, say, using them out of habit)?
For instance, when you talk about the beginning of "Phobus," and how the improvised cajon part was "absolutely" the best (only) way to start the piece, isn't that an example of how the process and the music it enables are, in effect, entangled?
In other words, if there was no other way to begin the piece, then the process, at that moment, mattered to you a great deal. No?
Posted by: Andrew Durkin | 01 March 2010 at 02:25 PM
Hi Andrew,
As a composer, I care deeply about my process. But listeners don't (and shouldn't... or at least shouldn't feel obliged to) care at all about any of the sausage-making. What matters is the result.
Posted by: DJA | 01 March 2010 at 04:02 PM
I enjoyed reading this. Your opening paragraph reminded me of Ideology, Burgers, and Beer, a piece Brad Mehldau wrote for Jazz Times that addresses some of the issues you discussed and is every bit as funny as the title would suggest.
One point of friendly disagreement. You write, in the comment thread:
"As a composer, I care deeply about my process. But listeners don't (and shouldn't...or at least shouldn't feel obliged to) care at all about any of the sausage-making. What matters is the result."
Results matter to me as well, but I have often wished that listeners would care more about process--and that composers would care about it less! Your referencing to "sausage-making" is interesting in that the phrase is usually applied to politics, an arena that suffers from the same dysfunction: policy wonks discuss a lot of good ideas that never get implemented while Yeatsian villains, full of passionate intensity, take the woefully misinformed electorate for a ride.
More extensive thoughts on the process/results divide here.
Posted by: Vikram Devasthali | 02 March 2010 at 11:54 AM
Hi Vikram,
Thanks for linking to that Mehldau piece. Thelonious Monk vs. Bud Powell is actually a perfect pairing for the Two Kinds of People game.
(Tipping my hand: it make a big difference what you understand the question to be. If it's "Who would win in a cutting contest?" or "Who contributed more to the development of bebop language?", those questions are both very different from "If you could only listen to either Monk records or Bud Powell records for the rest of your life, which would you choose?")
Posted by: DJA | 02 March 2010 at 09:39 PM
"from how I view music... any indication of ANYTHING to any musician that causes that musician to respond in any way other than what he would were it not so indicated, IS notation. And since I define composition as 'the assembling of musical materials, generally accessible to every musician, into a NEW order' and improvisation as the INSTANTANEOUS realization of composition without the benefit / or demerit / of being able to change or alter anything for ME, all music is both composed and improvised."
--Bill Dixon
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article_print.php?id=35447
Posted by: Jason Guthartz | 03 March 2010 at 11:34 AM
Hey Darcy:
But listeners don't (and shouldn't... or at least shouldn't feel obliged to) care at all about any of the sausage-making. What matters is the result.
I guess I understand this as a response to artistic movements that seem to foreground process above all else. But clearly, in jazz, listeners do care about process. Just look at the responses to your process-oriented posts! And as long as that doesn't interfere with a listener's experience of the musical result (but instead enhances it), I don't see why it should be something to downplay.
Posted by: Andrew Durkin | 04 March 2010 at 11:33 AM
Hi Andrew,
As a listener, I have to say I kind of resent musicians who use the stage as their personal practice room/composition studio/loft space, etc, and then justify it in the name of "process." I want to hear the good stuff, dammit. I don't care about your "unmediated and undiluted creative flow," or your composition that consists of a collage of every last little thing you came up with during your pre-compositional work, or whatever.
If the shit is good, then yeah, maybe then I'm curious about how you did it. And I'm happy to talk shop about my own work if people ask. But I hate hate hate it when people fetishize process like it's end in itself. It's not. It's a means to an end.
Posted by: DJA | 04 March 2010 at 11:51 AM
Hey Darcy:
As a listener, I have to say I kind of resent musicians who use the stage as their personal practice room/composition studio/loft space, etc, and then justify it in the name of "process."
Ha! Can't say I disagree with that. (Can't say the last time I witnessed it, either, but maybe I'm just going to the wrong shows...)
Posted by: Andrew Durkin | 04 March 2010 at 09:51 PM
alas there was a time, not long ago, when Your Average Listener really could care about the nuances of the technical assemblies in the music. Audiences knew music, they sang in church from psalmbooks, sang in the choirs as children, played in the school bands, the senior bands and later in the Foundary or Company or Town Bands, there were instruments in many homes and more than one player for each.
And then ... along came Those Infernal Machines, and what did John Philip say would happen? And it came to pass, within a generation, just as he said, nary a home would know the music of their culture.
So I find it deliciously ironic that your music, who takes Sousa's quote to title your (fabulously successful ;) debut album, should also perhaps be the first Jazz composer in a sadly long time who does challenge the listener by olding out one or two choice little nuances that, for them that has the nous can take some deeper meaning, and deeper enjoyment, and who knows, may yet lead one or two of them to dust off great-grandma's old baritone horn and learn a thing or two about how these sausages are really made!
Posted by: mrG | 07 March 2010 at 01:39 AM
When it comes to larger jazz groups, your approach to the music doesn't appear to be very different from the others who chose to work in that format. Isn't that really the point behind having a larger group? Instead of the improviser "showboating", we know it's the bandleader's "show".
In the end, I think all serious jazz musicians, not just composers, want to tell a story and serve what's best for the music. In this case even improvisers are doing some serious editing while creating solos.
I think people who listen to larger jazz groups are looking for the structure element you are talking about. I don't mean that in a bad way. I find the composition/orchestration/arrangement factor in large jazz groups to be some of the most thrilling jazz. Keep up the good work, few have the will to overcome the many challenges of working in this larger musical format.
Posted by: Jeff Smith | 08 March 2010 at 10:42 PM
Really thought provoking.
I was actually thinking about this myself, in reference to free jazz. I tend to like to listen to small bands and lots of "out" stuff, but I realized after listening to Dave Holland's Conference of the Birds that perhaps the central thing making that album stand out as Great - with a capital G - to me was the composition. Perhaps from the perspective of "the solo should only happen when nothing else can happen", that type of album might be too open, but all the same the compositions are key, what separates it from anarchy or musical masturbation.
On further reflection it came to me that this was true of a great deal of jazz I consider Great, not just in free jazz - the composition creates the space for the improvisation to occur in. Name a player and what comes up is tunes/pieces linked to that player, whether composed by them or as the best vehicle for what they have to say.
So I agree with you that there is no "either/or" of composition/improvisation. I came to it from the other side of the equation to some extent, but I think I reached the same conclusion.
Posted by: adamatari | 09 March 2010 at 10:01 PM