RE: Free improv

["Liebig, Steuart A." <LiebigSA@Maritz.com>]

> I agree with your last sentence.   Just as there is good rock and bad
> rock,
> good jazz and bad jazz, etc. there is also good free improv and bad free
> improv.
> 
> 
        I think that this is well put. After all, how many times have we
heard great three-chord rock songs and bad three-chord rock songs. There
does have to be some "talent" (or whatever - - creative intelligence?)
behind the stuff. 

        Someone else made the point that you need to have the ears for the
stuff too - - - for instance, I don't have the ears for Celine Dion, which
doesn't mean that she's bad, just that I don't care for the music she 
sings.

        I saw Branca way back in the early '80s at Schoenberg Hall at UCLA 
.
. . I went with high expectations, I didn't care for it at all. I don't get
him, yet I get plenty of others from the same basic downtown NYC scene
(simplifying here . . . ). 


> Good free improv has a conversation going on between two or more 
>musicians
> (which is why, I think, it is a tough assignment to do good free improv
> solo because you're basically talking to yourself).   If you think about
> it, conversations in real life are never pre-planned.  
> 
        Sometimes people are interesting conversationalists, sometimes
they're not. Sometimes they have "better" conversations with some people
than with others - - - CHEMISTRY. Sometimes one doesn't like what or how
someone says something, or finds them boring. So it goes with ANY performer
- - -  IMHO. Part of the "commitment" that I suppose one makes when dealing
with this sort of thing is that one goes with an open mind . . . sometimes
you're going to see dreck, sometimes mediocrity, sometimes brilliance.
Sometimes I wait through an entire evening of dreck in hopes of one 
instance
of brilliance, or something that will inspire me or make me think (not to
say something that I like). Often I am rewarded . . . 


> I guess its no coincidence that when I hear free improv I don't like, it
> sounds like at least one person is not listening to the other(s).
> 
> 
        Yet . . . sometimes, as in a conversation, you may hear the one
person who is listening making many cogent points.

        Oh yeah    Gareth . . . most people probably don't want to hear it.
But then again many, many people went to see Titanic and got the video, 
etc;
and I never will - - - I'll be waiting for the video release of Peter
Greenaway's "The Pillow Book" - - - different strokes for different folks. 

        stig