Music
No idea which song you should play? Just improvise and come to this fest
By Joe GrossMay 20, 2004
There's an old saw about improvisation that explains a great deal. In fact, like many an old saw, it's the easiest way to think about the difference between composition (or any sort of songwriting, for that matter) and improv.
In composition, you have a theoretically infinite amount of time to create two minutes of music. In improvisation, you compose the piece in that same two minutes.
The No Idea Festival of Improvised Music is dedicated to the sort of creativity that takes place entirely in that two minutes. Organized for the first time last year by two local musicians -- drummer Chris Cogburn and guitarist Kurt Newman -- the No Idea fest is dedicated to celebrating the creative freedom, unique discipline and singular music that come from improv.
Not quite jazz (though often remarkably jazzlike), not quite modern composition (but far from any sort of orthodox rock either), contemporary creative improvisation is music for its own sake, and this year, musicians are coming from as far away as Portland, Ore., Boston and even Berlin to play together in Austin.
Like many contemporary abstract improvisors, Newman, 29, has roots in indie rock. He became interested in the format when he was about 20.
| The No Idea Festival of Improvised Music plays various times Thursday-Saturday, Church of the Friendly Ghost (209 Pedernales St., 220-1558) and the Red Door (2511 E. Sixth St.), www.mikebullock.com/NOIDEA. |
Newman also found himself attracted to the radical egalitarianism that group improvisation demands: "There's a politics to it," he says.
Though there's a stereotype of improvisors as free-blowing jazzbos concerned with the way they sound and nothing else, Newman says this couldn't be farther from the truth.
"There's no one ideal state," he says. "One of the confusing things about free improvisation is that there's this perceived hierarchy of freedom, that the goal is to be the 'most free' or something. It's not about pursuing the highest level of abstraction as much as the highest level of autonomy while still remaining in a collaborative context."
No Idea is about exploration for both musicians and audience, exploration of the idea that there can be a musical state in which nobody feels artistically coerced. "Everybody would be free to retain as much of their own agency," Newman says.
He also denies that improvisation is humorless stuff. "Audiences think there's a kind of religious austerity about this music," he says. "There are no rules or dogma, this is just about people interested in these sounds."
"These sounds" are what attracted Sandy Ewan, one of Austin's most exciting young improvisors (so young -- 19 to be exact -- that she has to cut our conversation short so she can study for an architecture exam).
Ewan's been playing the guitar since the eighth grade, but became involved in improvised music through Houston's Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts (MECA) workshops. The program, led by No Idea participant David Dove, introduces principles of this kind of music to school age kids.
As a result, Ewan -- known for her technique of using sidewalk-sized sticks of chalk on her strings as a slide -- has played with some of Texas' most accomplished improvisors.
"It was completely different from everything else I've ever heard," Ewan says. "There were so many different approaches."
"Sandy is a great example of what workshops can do," says No Idea director Chris Cogburn. "She's a really special kid."
No Idea will host several free workshops open to any musician, and Cogburn will be leading the Friday afternoon version. Like Newman, Cogburn came to free improv out of punk and indie rock, and the 30-year old native of Eugene, Ore. emphasizes the importance of responsibility that the musicians have to each other.
"One of the keys to the workshops is figuring out how we can make musicians feel the level of responsibility that a stage dancer feels," he says. "When you give someone your weight physically, you trust that they are not going to drop you. It should be the same way with improvised music."
This, then, is the key to purely improvisational music: trust.
Newman feels exactly the same way. "In a purely improvisational setting, the only question a musician needs to ask is, 'Am I willing to accept responsibility for the musical decisions I make?' "
Watching these relationship, giving yourself over to them, can prove very powerful for an audience member.
"For me as a listener it took me a long time to realize that improvisation is about the pleasure of music being made in the moment," Newman says. "That's the payoff."
jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926
