Free improvisation is a genre of music with a self-explanatory name. Nothing is planned in advance, and the performers create the music on the spot by responding to what the others are doing in that moment.
The key fiffdimension album in this genre is in the non-idiomatic idiom in Norway
– a collection of improvised instrumental music, from the point of view of my own attempts as an untrained outsider to fit in with advanced jazz players
(including Jeff Henderson, Blair Latham , Paul Winstanley, Daniel Beban, Julie Bevan and more)
| in two halves, | 15 years apart: |
| 1999 , | and 2014, to show an evolution. |
| featuring | |
| Simon O’Rorke – percussion | Simon O’Rorke – synthesisers |
| Paul Winstanley – synth bass | |
| Blair Latham – alto sax | Blair Latham – bass clarinet |
| Jeff Henderson – clarinet | Julie Bevan – acoustic guitar |
| Bridget Kelly – tenor sax | Michael Hall – alto sax |
| Daniel Beban – electric guitar | Chris Prosser – violin |
| Dave Edwards – electric and acoustic guitars | Dave Edwards – bass, electronics, tenor sax |
It’s a double album, recorded in Wellington
This kind of free improvisation differs from that of The Winter, which is a regular trio with its own particular flavour, and the more structured improvisation (and regular beat) of The Electricka Zoo and Ascension Band.
A few years ago I wrote a chapter of Jazz Aotearoa, a book about New Zealand jazz music history, discussing the free improvisation and avant-garde jazz scene in Wellington at the turn of the millennium.
Its historical roots are in the free jazz of the 1960s, but it’s since expanded to include influences from outside the jazz tradition entirely (just as well since I don’t have proper jazz chops). Often there may no regular beat and no key signatures or conventional melody – hence “the non-idiomatic idiom”.
I’ve also dabbled with free improvisation at other times, including playing at Vitamin S events in Auckland
and various one-off spontaneous groups in Wellington and elsewhere
At other times I’ve used free improvisations as raw material, which has been edited non-linearly and multitracked into retrospective compositions – not so much cheating as a whole other topic…
fiffdimension 