Part 2

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? What balance is there between forgetting and remembering in your work?

Well, that's a good question, and the main word or concept here is balance.

I like the idea that you are rearranging yourself in every performance. This is regulated by a mix of forces between your own musical tools and history, and the other players, the spot and the audience.

So, this balance is more about keeping you open to create any kind of dialogue between you and all this information/energy that surrounds you for a certain length of time, than anything else.

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your improvisations which you couldn't or wouldn't through other musical approaches? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation?

What I can find in music improvisation and not in other musical contexts, is the possibility to change things in the moment and observe their behaviour.

At the same time, it has the capacity to modify that to an uncertain and surprising musical path.

In terms of your personal expression and the experience of performance, how does playing solo compare to group improvisations?

My experience with solo playing, is that you are dealing permanently, and in a deep way, with the audience, the spot, and your own ideas in the moment.

Whereas when you are in a collective situation, you are conscious about these points, too, of course. But your main focus is on the interaction with the other players, that micro world that you create with the others.

This is the meaningful thing which makes the difference.



In your best improvisations, do you feel a strong sense of personal presence, or do you (or your ego) “disappear”?  

When I go deep into music improvisation, in my view, I feel that I am part of something, and at the same time I see how the energies are flowing from all the people who is involved: musicians, audience and nature.

Something that is created by humans and is part of something bigger than them.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. From your experience and current projects, what does this process feel like and how does it work?

In depends on the project. Normally I don't use so many words when I improvise, in fact no words are better.

But for example, in one of my specific project like the Chilean trio Nichunimu, we have been talking about how could the repetition be represented, and this then becomes part of our creative system.

We just talk in a conceptual way, repetition like circles, no defined material.



Stewart Copeland said: “Listening is where the cool stuff comes from. And that listening thing, magically, turns all of your chops into gold.” What do you listen for?

I think that this quote assumes that listening is bigger than the concept in itself. Acceptance could be an essential part of this concept. Let the things going on, don't put barriers on it, then we'll see what happen. But yes, I agree with the sentence above.

On the other hand, there is a good example of listening and stopping to listening in action. In the epic band AMM, on the one side there is John Tilbury, very into the listening thing. And on the other, there is Keith Rowe intentionally cancelling the sense of listening, intending to create another independent dimension, in his own  words “What I will always want is to expand our spectrums of activity rather than reduce them”  

[Read our John Tilbury interview]

I think it is good to confront these two ideas of understanding - no understanding, clearness and no clearness in parallel. I see the whole creative process in improv music as something flexible and malleable in essence.

What I really like about this is that you don't have to understand everything that happens. Just be there and put some stuff on it in the most opening way possible.     

There can be surprising moments during improvisations – from one of the performers not playing a single note to another shaking up a quiet section with an outburst of noise. Have you been part of similar situations and how did they impact the performance from your point of view?

Right, in this kind of situation I distinguish two versions. When someone is trying to put something conceptual or pre-thinking in an improvised musical context, this is not interesting to me.

On the other hand, there is the case that someone really feels that there is too much inside the music and is preparing some fresh air for a nice transition.

Transition is the key word here.

I have always been fascinated by the many facets of improvisation but sometimes found it hard to follow them as a listener. Do you have some recommendations for “how to listen” in this regard?

How to listen is like how you breath. Nobody breathes exactly in the same way. It is difficult to recommend how to do it because when you're listening, you are interpreting reality in one way or another. And that interpretation or reconstruction is so unique.

My point of attraction in this matter is immediately activated when I listen to somebody taking decisions in the moment. How can you detect that? Mmm you can smell it. When there is no risk, or when someone is studying the instrument in front of your face … that's boring.

And look, you can see this even in the case of famous players. In this game you cannot escape dealing with instability. Actually, that is one of the magical things about this practice.

In a way, improvisations remind us of the transitory nature of life. When an improvisation ends, is it really gone, just like a cup of coffee? Or does it live on in some form?

Well, an impro gig lives in your body and your mind for a couple of days, and is part of your conscious history, even if you cannot remember it after a while.

When you are part of the players or the audience in a good show of improvised music, it remains a feeling of something special, a kind of density of being part of life and nature.

At the same time, that moment is a nice dialogue between the density and the deepest feeling of being alive, and our rushing daily life.