PRESENT WERE: Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen, Tuomo Haapala, Frank Hiesler, Henrik Rasmussen, Eckhard Weymann
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CBN What is the right form of integrating composition and improvisation to your opinion ?
TH: often, many good ideas are lost in improvisation, thrown into the garbage, therefore I like to compose also. But free improvisation is really brilliant when it works.
CBN and you seem also to like to push musicians forward into improvising...
TH yes
EW composition can secure that there's no failure at a concert
TH there's a big difference playing for an audience or not, especially if the audience has paid.
CBN this sounds to me as a too humble attitude to free improvisation, I think the audience too deserves to experience the brilliancy you mentioned
TH improvisation with guidelines is also free
CBN but one could also have indeterminate music before an audience. Composition to me is for clarity of structure and for going places, like buying airtickets, but not an insurance against the audience, so to speak.
EW composition can broaden the perspective, take you places you wouldn't go by chance, cross the borders of your habits.
HR why are we talking about security ? To me, concert performance is about being well-prepared as a person.
TH People like Derek Bailey and Peter Brötzmann play free improvisation but in a very definite style, thay take no risk
EW composition might help them
FH we tried different things today, that changed our way of playing
TH if Shakespeare hadn't written down his stories it would be sad, I'm grateful we have them, sometimes ideas are so good!
CBN it makes me sad to think about all the routine work done by composition students all over the world who take the traditional notation system as the Holy Scripture
TH every music education should have an improvisation workshop
CBN yes, so that people would not have to work against the notation but could have an open process like we just had
FH Compositions with improvisation concepts could have the aim to make people more open with music. Right Durations [Stockhausen's piece which we played] is a piece with a certain character but much space.
TH in a concert we made once we had a cross-fading between traditional symphonic music and improvisation, that was a provocation to the audience.
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