Name: Robbie Lee
Nationality: American
Occupation: Composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, label founder at Telegraph Harp
Current release: Robbie Lee teams up with John Thayer and Ezra Feinberg for the self-titled Earth Room debut album on Related States.

[Read our Ezra Feinberg interview]

If you enjoyed this interview with Robbie Lee and would like to know more about his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



When did you first start getting interested in musical improvisation?

By pure chance some of my early teachers played creative and experimental music, so I was improvising before thinking too much about it.

It was just in the fabric of my language, for as long as I can remember.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

In school I pulled CDs randomly from a jazz library, so there were all kinds of approaches … spanning, let’s say, from the early Ornette Coleman quartet to L Shankar’s electro-acoustic Hindustani double violin.

The music of Abdullah Ibrahim was so important for me, as was Coltrane’s trajectory, electric Miles, and a bit later the deep quiet intensity of the various Jimmy Giuffre trios (Paul Bley, Steve Swallow) and other worlds like AMM.

Focusing on improvisation can be an incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

The world of improvisation felt like a place further removed from musical competition (a truly unpleasant thing, yet almost unavoidable). So in that sense, improv was a free space / experience where I felt more of a sense of belonging.

Of course there are still plenty of people who treat improv as a competition, but I try to keep away from them!

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?

Less and less as time goes on. I deeply love the traditions but have an even stronger urgency to have my own voice, not just in my sound or tone, but the scaffolding of the music itself. So I guess it’s the tradition of eclectic iconoclastic weirdos, who still seem to know what they’re doing. Insiders who draw from the vibes of outsider music?

I feel I’m developing a musical language that gets more personal and insular (which definitely limits who else I can play with, if I’m staying true to my sound). My solo sopranino saxophone and tuning fork album Prismatist (Relative Pitch Records) from last year is so far the clearest showcase for this, and I hope that it will be a framework for future solo pieces.



I’m so proud of that record, and I still have no idea what kind of music it is.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

The willingness to keep learning technique, whether traditional or experimental. You have to practice and follow the thread of where that takes you.

Even though I believed I had my own voice early on, now I feel that I’m only just getting somewhere, a few decades later!

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?

This is a huge topic for me, and the problem is that my tools are so flashy and so much fun, that it’s easy to get bogged down and distracted by them. I play a million instruments, and maybe even a few of them well.

My first instruments were piano and saxophone, and as an improviser now I am mainly a flutist, on hypermodern and ancient historical instruments. I was drawn to improvise on early musical instruments (mostly European instruments from the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras) because there was no 20th century baggage, nobody to compare me to.

But then it turns out that they offer fascinating musical possibilities that you can’t find any other way. And plenty of limitations too, which lead to their own creative flashes.

Can you talk about a work, event or performance in your career that's particularly dear to you? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

Mary Halvorson and I made a duo record called Seed Triangular (New Amsterdam Records) a few years ago. Sometime after that she invited me to play at an Austrian festival called Wels. I played a solo show, and one with the group Seaven Teares (Charlie Looker, Amirtha Kidambi, Russell Greenberg and me).



The solo show was a magical moment, a daytime performance in this small domed chapel building, sunlight streaming in, and a packed audience that was there to really listen. I played baroque flutes, medieval organ, and “self-contained” electronics – devices with their own batteries and speakers. We dismantled the PA system and there was no background hiss or hum.

It felt like I could have been alone in the woods, and there was no pressure to rush anything, but just explore and let the performance unfold.

How do you feel your sense of identity influences your collaborations? Do you feel as though you are able to express yourself more fully in solo mode or, conversely, through the interaction with other musicians? Are you “gaining” or “sacrificing” something in a collaboration?

Solo is the place where I can really create exactly what I have in my mind, because I’m not a big notation person. But I love playing in very small groups, duos and trios especially. Improvising in a duo is one of the most intimate experiences you can have in life, if you and the other person are both tuned in and in the zone.

There were a lot of moments on the Earth Room (Related States) record where, during playbacks, I didn’t know who was making which sound, if some noise was me or not. I love that feeling, where the collective group is creating an energy in the room … it’s electrifying.

Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. Regardless of whether or not you agree with his perspective, what kind of materials have turned to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?

The most interesting thing we have is personality, humanity. If you bring openness into a session, all material is transformable … and transformative.

When you're improvising, does it actually feel like you're inventing something on the spot – or are you inventively re-arranging patterns from preparations, practise or previous performances?

When you’re doing it right, those are two sides of the same coin.

You have to learn everything you can, so you can forget it on stage. Sometimes I catch myself trying to play some particular kind of phrase on purpose, but I really don’t want to!

When things are at their best, the brain is in a different kind of blank space, instantaneous and reactive.

To you, are there rules in improvisation? If so, what kind of rules are these?

Listen. Listen while playing, and listen while not playing.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work – and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?

When it’s working, it’s like telepathy. Even though I love being able to set the whole atmosphere in a solo performance, playing with small groups will often draw out things I never would have come up with on my own. So both formats are crucial and reflect on each other. I would be a less interesting group improviser if I didn’t also play solo.

To turn this on its head, one of the most interesting and unusual things I’ve done is a collaboration with Lea Bertucci (Winds Bells Falls on Telegraph Harp) where I am generating sounds and she is live-processing them and throwing them back at me.



So I am improvising with a warped version of myself, translated through her mind and tools. The telepathic network in those sessions was so complex, crazy really.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? In which way is it different between your solo work and collaborations?

If you see Abdullah Ibrahim play a solo piano concert and then ask him the name of a piece he played in the middle, he doesn’t know, doesn’t even remember what he played. Even though he is playing through highly personal compositions that he refined over decades.



That kind of blank slate with muscle memory is a really beautiful place to be in, where playing music is just an effortless swirling cloud. Effortless, even when it’s difficult and takes everything you’ve got.

How do you see the relationship between sound, space and performance and what are some of your strategies and approaches of working with them?

My acoustic instruments tend to be pretty delicate, and they love a reverberant sound space.

I will definitely vary what I pack in my bag, for the performance space and vibe of a show. If there are drums and no microphone, then I definitely need electronics, amps, reed instruments, keyboards or whatever.

So the physical space will imply the tools to bring, and then the tools create that element of chance that will set the tone for the show.

In a way, improvisations remind us of the transitory nature of life. What, do you feel, can music and improvisation express and reveal about life and death?

Everything you have is the moment you’re in. So fully inhabit this moment. And laugh about it, too!