by Gail Brand / photograph copyright Dennis Austin

Naturally, the short answer is: ‘Yes of course. I do it, therefore it must exist’. However, I am aware that my subjective perspective is limited and has the omnipotent qualities of a child’s eye view of the world - ‘if I think something is, it is. I make all the things in the world happen, just by thinking them’. Only maturity and self-awareness gives some objectivity to this view, but I don’t think the musician (particularly the improvising musician) ever fully lets go of this feeling. The free improviser can truly say:
‘If I want music to happen in this particular way/my way, I can make it happen, right here and now, just by playing it, without waiting for instruction, permission, or even approval.’ So, this question requires a rather more in-depth consideration.

It’s the child-like simplicity of the concept ‘play it and it is’ that makes people ask the question ‘is there such thing as free improvisation?’ Many struggle to accept that it really is a matter of sitting/standing with your instrument and playing it - from ‘no-sound’ to sound without an agreement of what to play - only the agreement that we will set aside this time to be together in music. (Notice I say ‘no-sound’ rather than silence - as I feel silence holds a different potency in music than ‘no-sound’, but that is another debate!).

But I want to consider the word ‘free’. It holds such a seductive weight, doesn’t it? It could mean -
‘for no money’ ‘without ties’ ‘without borders’ ‘once captive, now released’ etc
…or it could conjure up more enervating thoughts such as -
‘no responsibility to anyone, therefore maybe an implied loneliness’, ‘at liberty to come and go with no reflection of the loss of you in another- i.e. not being there, not being missed’. It can mean ‘without rules’ - which may sound enticing, but some definitely find this context the hardest to operate within.
No guidelines? No sense of what to expect? Anything could happen? Anarchy, chaos?

These ideas are located in the fear of lack of safety and unpredictability which human organization struggles to tolerate & understandably so. We must know where we live, when we can eat, will we be warm, will we be loved, protected, and so on. If these basic survival needs are not met, a human being does not thrive and tends to fail. So some ask, why would an artiste recreate that sense of abandon in their music making or other artistic expression? Maybe us free improvisers have to, in order make sense of what is around us.

It is no surprise therefore to discover that the roots of free improvisation in the UK stems from the likes of Paul Rutherford and John Stevens (amongst others)- working class men who were just leaving their national service circa late 1950s/early 1960s. Their music emerged in a recently post 2nd world war time, entering a new era of possibility economically, for women & for the civil rights movement. This is combined with their own personal liberation from national service. What else could they do but find their own expression and make up their own music? They may not have been conscious of it and both are sadly dead now, so we can’t directly ask them - but did their free improvisation act as a performance commentary on the uncertainty of their time?

This may seem a bit removed from the starting question ‘is there such thing as free improvisation’? But art always commented on its times, art is a product of its time. It can’t say it is looking to the future, as that doesn’t exist as a predetermined predictable dimension if it hasn’t been lived yet. So the freely improvised music made from these people maybe paralleled the moment-to-moment changes in their lives and in the wider society. That is powerful art. Coming from the musicians rather than a third party composer or off the end of a distinguished baton perhaps implies the concept also that musicians can determine how they self -express, which grinds against the norms of a musician’s perceived role in western society. Are they meant interpreters and conveyors of an organized musical endeavour?

Interestingly in some eastern cultures, musicians are the masters within their community, are gurus and have pupils who study under their intense guidance. They are held in the highest regard by all and are treated as such. In the west, society at large still seems to have little regard for the musician or creative being. So musicians forging their own musical path is tantamount to mutiny for some, it would seem! I’m being provocative (but sincere). It interesting to note, that much of these eastern musics contain improvisation, albeit within some very set parameters, as central to the musical nature and spirit. Maybe there is an implicit trust that the musician will improvise and then articulate the feelings of the communities’ music on their behalf by the musician’s personal creativity? But I’m only going to touch on that with the lightest of fingers for now.

Thinking in terms of a group evolving separately from a leader, once power is seized by the group from a leader, real change takes place and we have a momentary sense of ‘not knowing’. We may have a military coup, a prison riot, a student sit-in or an industrial strike. This unsettles everyone, even the perpetrators.
‘It is bad enough that groups in society demand their right of expression and terms and conditions without our artists taking it into ‘entertainment’ or performance!’

Some feel that surely music reassures, comforts, relaxes and calms us down. Yes, it does, but for some of us, we are made calm & comforted by the true expression of what is going on for us in the moment, shared with others who somehow feel the same. We are heard. We are matched, reflected and reinforced. We are anything but lonely.

Can we go further back into our human instinct? Don’t we make it up as we go along, from birth, mixed in with modelling from others, internalizing processes and dealing with new discoveries?
We have to learn how to survive the pain of existence and the fear of the unknown. Recreating this through play helps a child formulate their own view of the world, develop empathy for the view of another during play, and gain tolerance of another’s expression and ideas, even if they don’t easily match their own. Through play, the child learns how to negotiate, pace, struggle, realize and ultimately survive and develop a sense of self- isn’t that the essence of creativity? Generally a child’s play is not pre-determined by adults - that would be perverse. We surely want our children to create their own ideas, expand their own thinking and be as imaginative as possible, within a safe environment and context. Why does that have to stop as we grow? As adults, we shouldn’t lose our ability to be playful- in fact we should demand it as a right. If as humans we have the capacity to play freely as children, we have the capacity to play freely as adults. Maybe we have to ‘re-learn’ how to be free again.

The best way to answer the question is for me to reflect on what I’m doing, internally when I realize my ideas externally (through play): Once trombone is in hand, I think consciously about breathing, my seating/standing position, am I comfortable? Where shall I place myself in relation to any other musicians? Are they ready? Am I ready? When shall we start? You’ll see I have mostly questions, but no answers as yet.

So there is a practical administration moments before we play. If I don’t know my fellow musicians well, I wonder what they might be like. I have already probably made some unconscious connections with them between meeting and playing so how to play with them might be forming internally, without me being consciously aware of it. Once we are ready, I hold my trombone, breathe, form an embouchure and start to play. I may have a mute in hand, and that can depend on if I’m feeling nervous, confident, decisive or defiant (or any number of moods).

To start with, I feel my way with sounds that I like and then start to respond to what I hear, feel and sense. I can’t honestly say that I am always consciously inspired by what a fellow musician plays enough to send me off on to a thrilling musical journey or conversation with them, but we have to start and find our way through. However, on three occasions that I distinctly remember in my 15 years of improvising, I have been instantly drawn to a collaborating improviser from the first notes we played together. The rest of the time it is a developing dialogue that needs support and creative thinking. But starting isn’t the hard part. It’s sustaining play that can be the most challenging. Once the mood is set, it changes. If a pattern is established, should it remain? Should I stamp all over this, or is it tender and fragile and in need of feeding. These sorts of conscious thoughts chime clearly in my head at times, but for the majority of the time, I’m not thinking about anything apart from what I’m hearing or feeling.

The downside of free improvisation (and there is one) is that what we have played cannot be replicated ever again. We could record it, transcribe it and read it again, but even that would not be the same. Moreover we can’t feel like that ever again. Every moment is there and gone; there and gone and each moment is unique. This process can be attributed to all musics of course; feelings change over the course of playing Mahler’s 2nd Symphony and no one orchestra will play it identically to it’s last performance or the same as another orchestra. However, free improvisation has a different agenda to pre-composed music or even structured improvising. Its raison d’être is to ’see what happens’. In other music we have a map of what happens, when it is meant to happen and how we will make it happen. Even in structured improvisation (jazz, workshops in improvisation) parameters are set by harmony, rhythmic ideas, feel etc.

Only one rule of free improvisation is usually set before play and that is how long each improvisation or ‘piece’ will last. There do have to be some limits after all and audiences have to go home! But in terms of content, absolutely no musical ideas are suggested prior to the first sound and that is the important part to dwell on. That will begin to answer this question.

I have arrived there by thinking in terms of ‘free-ness’ rather than ‘freedom (which for me implies a time when the music was once captive, which it can’t have been as it hasn’t been played yet). I have considered what the word ‘free’ conjures up for me and what the possible historic context of the free improvisation might be. But the central part of my thinking lies in being able, like children to ‘play’, musically and in life. We must be able to take risks, to bear not knowing all the time, to loosen our grip on our own and each other’s creative liberty and allow things to be as they are and perhaps bask in the albeit temporary relief of not having to worry about where we are going or what will happen when we get there and just ‘be’ in music with each other.

Maybe the next question should be - ‘why does free improvisation exist?’.