State of Improvisation 2010

[hatta]

All I was saying was they his engagement with it was not nearly at the same level as Feldman's, Cage's or Brown's yet his music reached about as high a level of "abstraction" as is possible and was quite brilliantly so, more so than say, Brown, who was still going on and on about Calder when I saw him right before he died.

In 2 years of seeing Christian pretty much daily. I can't remember him talking much about abstract art. Music, politics, literature, etc. But we didn't talk all that much about art and I he didn't write much about it. I am sure he was aware of many things that he didn't blab on about.

Fair enough. Anyway I'm not arguing for the original point or misconceptions of it anyway.

[mudd]

in an effort to bring this back on topic - is there a strong engagement with art among improvisers/musicians today? any examples? i know keith talks about his art and how it relates to music, but i feel like his artistic cues are largely outside of the era where his music exists. surely some people are more immediately engaged.

m

[jkudler]

Do you mean specifically contemporary visual art?

[mudd]

contemporary yes, visual no. anything outside of the music world i guess. i think bonnie jones has done work with theater?

m

[Damon_Smith]

Musicians with wider understanding of all the arts are just going to have the upper hand in dealing with abstract material.

Right, but the above is what I said. Wolff's involvement in classics would figure into this. I would rather say "other artforms" than "all the arts" since we only have so much time in the day. Other perspectives beyond music are really going to be extremely valuable in handle sound and texture based material.

[Damon_Smith]

in an effort to bring this back on topic - is there a strong engagement with art among improvisers/musicians today? any examples? i know keith talks about his art and how it relates to music, but i feel like his artistic cues are largely outside of the era where his music exists. surely some people are more immediately engaged.

m

Well, I moved to Houston primarily to be near the Twombly annex - (I have a bass duo gig there a week from today, BTW!). I'd Say the way Keith handles space and texture in all his work is extremely in line with painting.
The way it figures in can be direct or indirect, but it makes the work richer than it would be without that kind of engagement.

[Richard Barrett]

Most improvising musicians I know are pretty conversant with contemporary visual art. I don't know anything like as many visual artists, but my impression is that the converse isn't really the case. A lot of artists talk about listening to music while they work, but they generally don't mean listening to the music that gets discussed here. Or is that a mistaken impression?

[kp*]

Other perspectives beyond music are really going to be extremely valuable in handle sound and texture based material.

???

I'd Say the way Keith handles space and texture in all his work is extremely in line with painting.

How? What does that mean?

How does Keith handle space? What specifically differentiates his creation of texture?

When relating music to art there are always these very vague fuzzy notions put forward but nothing concrete is articulated. It serves the goal which is to align the two arts imbuing the music with a prestige it wouldn't other wise have but what is really being said?

[Damon_Smith]

Other perspectives beyond music are really going to be extremely valuable in handle sound and texture based material.

???

I'd Say the way Keith handles space and texture in all his work is extremely in line with painting.

How? What does that mean?

How does Keith handle space? What specifically differentiates his creation of texture?

When relating music to art there are always these very vague fuzzy notions put forward but nothing concrete is articulated. It serves the goal which is to align the two arts imbuing the music with a prestige it wouldn't other wise have but what is really being said?

Maybe you need to do a lot more listening and looking! I spend about equal time looking at visual art as listening to music. I guess he looks at IHM so he could explain it himself, but it is just way more related to placing ideas in space as on a canvas than any sort of traditional rhythm or harmonic structure that you can even find in EFI and free jazz.
I don't see as fuzzy or vague in the least - it is fairly concrete to me.

[fuzzycotton]

Hello, new here, fascinating discussion going on.

When relating music to art there are always these very vague fuzzy notions put forward but nothing concrete is articulated. It serves the goal which is to align the two arts imbuing the music with a prestige it wouldn't other wise have but what is really being said?

i agree with this. I'm a huge admirer of Keith Rowe's music and always will be but the fact that he often refers to painting undermines it for me. I know he gets a lot of inspiration from painting but it's music to me, and there is nothing wrong or inferior about music as an art form.

[kp*]

When relating music to art there are always these very vague fuzzy notions put forward but nothing concrete is articulated. It serves the goal which is to align the two arts imbuing the music with a prestige it wouldn't other wise have but what is really being said?

Here I am giving the impression that there is nothing beyond vagueness to be had. But i think that there are some (but not a lot) somewhat more concrete connections with art that can be made beyond the usual "I cant really say what I mean but you know what I mean, right?"

I always felt that the kind of dynamic morphology of some improvisor's melodic gestures were evocative of the kind of morphologies found in calligraphy or arm gestures in found in some types of dance.

Incidentally, I'll admit that this kind of dynamic gestalt shaping is one of the many reasons why I find listening to Korean music so pleasing and why my decades long obsession with Korean trad. music has yet to wane even slightly so I am especially tuned in to that wavelength and there just are so many beautiful gestures to be heard.

This connection between sonic sound shapes in time and calligraphic gestalts is not a huge leap to make for the musical language of someone like Taku Sugimoto (A reason why i value Alto, Myshkin Musicu as much as I do Opposite). Whether he intends it or it is just an imagined byproduct of various things being extra present and rubbing together in my pea sized brain I don't know but it is a very salient and compelling connection to these ears. You can even look at sonograms of some of his (and others, just using him as my example) music you can see what really look like temporal shapes being mapped in 2d space, shapes that resemble the more idiomatic curves of calligraphic brush strokes.

Okay so maybe that is not profound or original. It might even be stupid, but at least has the virtue of not being more vague twaddle or art school double-speak. I've said something. Dumb though it may be.
-kp--

[kp*]

Maybe you need to do a lot more listening and looking!

Seriously. Don't do that. You can't be generous and assume based on my fucking posts and everything else that I actually have done some listening reading and looking? I was born at night but i wasn't born last night yo.

but it is just way more related to placing ideas in space as on a canvas than any sort of traditional rhythm or harmonic structure that you can even find in EFI and free jazz.
I don't see as fuzzy or vague in the least - it is fairly concrete to me.

Well you cheated just now ... you said it was fairly clear to you and pretended like you didn't elaborate. You actually started to say something concrete about rhythm and structure and comparisons to EFI that I was supposed to mind read before but then just brushed me off with "well it's fairly concrete to me"

Well yeah the more you actually say something concrete about the fabric of the music then the more clear it will be.

-kp--

[fuzzycotton]

Damon_Smith wrote:Other perspectives beyond music are really going to be extremely valuable in handle sound and texture based material.

could you expand on this?

[Damon_Smith]

Yeah, but I don't really care if you or anyone else sees the similarity between Rowe's music and visual art. His music is put out there open ended and if it is easier for you to deal with purely as sound or music then go ahead and enjoy it that way.
I can walk over to the Rothko Chappel and Feldman and Rowe's music come to mind. Maybe it was the connection was placed there by liner notes, who knows?

There is a room of white Twombly canvanses at the Menil that I can just read as a one to one "score" for parts of "Contact" not to say that is what they had in mind while making that music but if needed to find other work that relates to it I'd go to that body of Twombly's work way before any of Charlie Christian's or Hendrix's work. But that is me and how I choose to enjoy the music.
Anyone else can use the work however they want once it is out there.

[niwi]

we are probably getting wildly off-topic by now, but for me and the way i do things, the processes of painting and musicmaking are almost the same in very specific ways and i can't do one without relating it to the other, probably because i spent my whole life painting before i ever thought of making music. not in a fuzzy or nebulous way, either, the actual steps i take to make a painting or a piece of music are pretty much the same - building structure, texture, and modulations in value and tone incrementally with many, many transparent layers, to the point of even sometimes employing what i think of as a grisaille or underpainting in a music piece. that's not improvisation, though

[kp*]

could you expand on this?

Is there anything to expand on? Its a tautology, no? Like saying water is wet.

Yeah, but I don't really care if you or anyone else sees the similarity between Rowe's music and visual art.

Guess we are done talking then.

[kp*]

to the point of even sometimes employing what i think of as a grisaille or underpainting in a music piece. that's not improvisation, though

So the grisaille functions like a cantus firmus of sorts for you?

[rainey]

I hope this isn't going to be about music and painting again.

I'm with kp in that I find the discussion of music and painting extraordinarily vague and useless. Maybe people need to look and listen more (!), and maybe they also need to spend more time with their families or learn how to write a computer program or cook a souffle or be bored out of their skulls or know what it's like to stab a person. I'm, personally, sick to death of people trying to link music to painting or any art to any other art. To me, it misses the entire point, which is where the art is coming from. Sure, stepping away from music and engaging with a painting might give you some more perspective on that generative kernel, but so can taking a bath or riding on a jet ski or dealing with someone vomiting in the middle of the street.

We're human beings - we're always going to make up some story about how something is connected to something else. And, most of the time, that story is going to be convenient, adbridged, and mostly wrong. Sometimes, engaging with a story can lead to something beautiful, but this tale of lines and space between painting and music has been far too privileged given the mileage it provides.

[niwi]

to the point of even sometimes employing what i think of as a grisaille or underpainting in a music piece. that's not improvisation, though

So the grisaille functions like a cantus firmus of sorts for you?

basically, or like a diagram.

[jon abbey]

just to remind, Keith put a disclaimer at the top of his post:

"Please understand this is not meant to be a table thumping 'this is how it should be done' or this is 'the only correct way' or anything other than my take and understanding"

I'm personally, sick to death of people trying to link music to painting or any art to any other art. To me, it misses the entire point, which is where the art is coming from.

what if it is coming from painting? I know that isn't really what you mean, but I think maybe that's the point that Keith and Vanessa are trying to make. I would feel more comfortable speaking for Keith if he wasn't also posting here, but I'll take a shot anyway, hopefully he can correct anything he doesn't agree with...

Keith spends a lot of his spare time reading biographies of artists in all disciplines (including music), and I think he personally draws a lot of inspiration in terms of overall form from what other artists have done before him. so the idea is to borrow the form and fill it with entirely different content, that's where his sound comes in. that's where the 'art is coming from', to use your term. this is how the 4g can be a string quartet to him, how the MIMEO/Tilbury can be a concerto for piano and orchestra (this one I think is hard to argue, although I'm sure some would), how The Room can have the internal form of a triptych. I'm not arguing that that's necessary or even possibly helpful knowledge, but that is how he sees it. whether or not that helps anyone else isn't really the point, I think. of course there's no reason as a listener you have to see any connection between art forms if you don't want (or don't care), and everyone obviously experiences abstract art in a different way, with entirely different sets of connections and sometimes even physical reactions.

I mean, poetry really inspires a lot of the work of Michael Pisaro, he tries to recreate that poetry in sound and usually puts the source material in his notes. are you banning that link also? that approach might not work well for anyone else in the world, same with Keith and his approach, but it works for them.

so yeah, that part I totally understand, although I've spent countless hours talking with Keith on similar topics. if we were drinking coffee in a cafe somewhere this weekend, my first question about this post would be asking him for some more detail on this part:

"The point is (of course) that the past is changed by the present, and likewise the present is changed by the past, when we make a new work all the works that have existed are (retroactively) affected, (no mater how slightly) and our present work is altered by the existing order. The past is not fixed. We have a responsibility to the past and the present."

this I'm not sure if I believe or not, but it's pretty fascinating to ponder (for me).

anyway, Bhob, you seem quite worked up. can I request a polemic for ErstWords?