Michael F. Duch: Free Improvisation - Method and Genre
Research Fellow at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Dept of Music
The aim of this project is to create methods and techniques for Free Improvisation. By studying the origins of what we know as Free Improvisation as a method of music-making in the mid-1960's, and to to see how something which was made as an opposite to style and convention, has not only created a recognizable genre, but also several sub-genres.
If one uses the dictionary explanation of the term Genre, one will find that it also can be applied to the development of Free Improvisation, although it may have been more of a method of music making than a style in the 1960's.
"Genres are vague categories with no fixed boundaries. Genres are formed by sets of conventions, and many works cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre)
I will examine contemporary musical artforms such as Fluxus and Open Form-techniques to create ways of learning and practicing (Free) Improvisation by utilizing written scores of a instructional or graphic nature. Therefore the English ensemble AMM and composer Cornelius Cardew will be my main focal point of my research on the connection between improvisation and Open Form.
I will also examine the differences between improvising with an ensemble, solo or in an intermedia-situation, where other more or less fixed elements such as video and tape may be used.
Read interview by the norwegian website "ballade.no"