Exploring the Art of Improvisation at the 2010 Improvisor Festival
This August, Birmingham (and Alabama) will celebrate the thirty-year history of the avant-garde music journal THE IMPROVISOR and the remarkable musical legacy of two Alabamans: experimental blues guitarist Davey Williams and violinist/violist LaDonna Smith. The celebration will take form as the 2010 IMPROVISOR FESTIVAL: a month-long, nationwide music, dance, and spoken-word extravaganza aimed at exploring the art of improvisation in all its myriad forms.
Featuring performances by some of the biggest names in the genre—including both Williams and Smith, experimental guitar maverick Henry Kaiser, Italian avant-garde percussion legend Andrea Centazzo, free improv sax guru Wally Shoup, "Ol' Timey Avant-Garde" synth-and-drums duo The Shaking Ray Levis, "pan-idiomatic" iconoclasts Ut Gret, rhythm ace Gino Robair, jamband godhead Col. Bruce Hampton, and Allman Brothers bassist Oteil Burbridge—the IMPROVISOR FESTIVAL will present a wide range of both solo exhibitions and once-in-a-lifetime collaborations that will give audiences a chance to see sonic artistry in its most raw unadulterated form: live, without a net, and in the crucible of THE MOMENT. Centered around concerts taking place at various venues throughout the city, the festival will also be holding satellite concerts in New York City, Seattle, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Athens, and Jackson, Mississippi, to help honor the occasion.
"Traveling Nimbocumulous" by LaDonna Smith
Attendees of the event can expect the unexpected as decades old alliances are revisited for the first time in years, newly christened affiliations take flight, and the past collides head on with the future in the instant we call NOW.
Aside from critical praise for pioneering jazz legend Sun Ra, it's rare for the words Alabama and avant-garde to be mentioned in the same paragraph—let alone same sentence—so it may come as a surprise to know that for over thirty years the state has been a creative hotbed for some of the most cutting-edge music to have ever come out of America. Although long considered a bastion of regressive cultural tendencies, Alabama has been at the forefront of the radical music movement known as free improvisation—music created live and "in the moment," with no preconceived notion of what it might be or become—and has produced two of the most well-respected practitioners of the genre: Williams and Smith.
Currently based out of their hometown of Birmingham, Williams and Smith began their artistic careers as some of the first American musicians to fully embrace the idea of free improvisation (the trend had been developing in Europe since the 1960s). Taking cues from such luminaries as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and Peter Brotzmann—with equal inspiration being drawn from the wide-open aesthetics of free jazz, the aleatory music of John Cage, world music, and the automatic writing practices of the Surrealist art movement—Williams and Smith began to experiment with the idea of "spontaneous composition" at a time when few American musicians took the practice very seriously. As a result, they—along with early scene-makers John Zorn, Eugene Chadbourne, and Henry Kaiser (among others)—helped pioneer a field which is now considered among the most important developments in late twentieth-century music—and a global phenomenon.
Freeing music from formal constraints imposed on it by traditional notions of rhythm, harmony, and melody, they opened whole new realms of sonic possibility by allowing musicians to chase their muse wherever it might lead them.
As an outgrowth of this pioneering work, Williams and Smith (along with co-conspirators Chris Cochrane, Jack Wright, and Lesli Dalaba) took the lead in promoting their boundary-busting sonic art form nationally by creating, in 1980, THE IMPROVISOR: an underground, DIY music journal dedicated to documenting the freewheeling sonorities they helped give birth to. Dubbed the "International Journal Of Free Improvisation," the publication began its life as a four-page, xeroxed newsletter for the Improvisor's Network (I.N.) which had been coalescing around the dynamic "Downtown" music scene developing in New York City's Lower East Side since the late 1970s. Initially conceived as a vehicle for like-minded artists from around the country (and world) to connect with one another and share ideas about their chosen craft, the journal quickly became a full-blown periodical/social networking tool that provided invaluable information about sympathetic touring spots and record labels, upcoming events and festivals, and critical discourse concerning the philosophical underpinnings of the genre. Made up of articles, diatribes, and reviews written by fellow artists from around the globe, the journal provided a much-needed forum for intellectual discussions about the nature of free improvisation and its practice at a time when scant attention was being paid to it by more mainstream media outlets. As a result, THE IMPROVISOR became a vital beacon for this criminally misunderstood genre and has proven to be the publication of note in terms of providing a broader historical appreciation of its progenitors and the music they made.
Although no one can be sure how it will all unfold, IMPROVISOR FESTIVAL concert-goers can be assured that it will never unfold quite the same way ever again, which is the way it was always meant to be....if it did, it wouldn't be improvisation. And that's the point.
For more information on performers and the schedule of events, please visit the festival's website at www.theimprovisorfestival.org OR THE IMPROVISOR's website at www.the-improvisor.com.
