Listen
Tree of Life
Tree of Life
◀
Play!
RADIO // Improvisions
Action/Reaction
Hosted by Ted Gordon
Originally aired 12/5/11

This episode looks at improvisations that result from performers reacting to something - a set of instructions, a sound, a feeling, a genre - to form pieces of music that blur the edges of the definitions of improvisation and composition. Though many of the pieces in this program are considered to be compositions written by composers, the music itself is often a reaction to a set of composed elements, making the individual works fluid, allowing them to change every time they are performed. Featuring David Behrman, Robert Ashley, Andrew C. Smith, Gordon Mumma, La Monte Young, and more.

More from Improvisions
RADIO // Improvisions
Frank Lyon & Bryce Hackford, Pearl Necklace
Hosted by Ted Gordon
Radio show

A Clocktower in-studio live set by Pearl Necklace, a project of Bryce Hackford and Frank Gilbert Lyon II performing "post-contemporary" music on synthesizers, drum machines, samplers, and other electronics. Plus an interview hosted by Ted Gordon.

This episode of Improvisions features a live, improvised set by Pearl Necklace, a project consisting of Bryce Hackford and Frank Gilbert Lyon II performing "post-contemporary" music on synthesizers, drum machines, samplers, and other electronics....

Originally aired 10/1/12
Listen
Read More »
RADIO // Improvisions
Drone
Hosted by Ted Gordon
Radio show

While not strictly improvised, the drone music in this episode draws the listener to the grey area between composition and improvisation, where perception and intention approach a liminal barrier beyond which lies an ecstatic, meditative aural event.

While not strictly improvised, the drone music in this episode draws the listener to the grey area between composition and improvisation, where perception and intention approach a liminal barrier beyond which lies an ecstatic, meditative aural event...

Originally aired 7/16/12
Listen
Read More »
RADIO // Improvisions
New York Noise
Hosted by Ted Gordon
Radio show

New York is a noisy place. This episode is focuses on noisy music that reflects a that world: a kind of one-to-one exchange, with a focus on the universe of musicians surrounding John Zorn, including Zorn himself, and numerous collaborators.

New York is a noisy place: subways, sirens, taxis, incoherent crazy people yelling at you on the street. For many musicians living here in the 1980s, it was even noisier: a time when crime, poverty, and urban decay pervaded the city, especially...

Originally aired 5/14/12
Listen
Read More »
RADIO // Improvisions
Big Bands
Hosted by Ted Gordon
Radio show

This show features “Big Bands” of improvisers from across the boundaries of genre, time, and place; including the Taj Mahal Travelers, the Promenade Theatre Orchestra, Horace Tapscott and the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Sun Ra, AMM, and more.

The era of the popular Big Bands, led by the likes of Count Basie and Duke Ellington is long gone but the form of the Big Band saw another incarnation in form of free jazz and experimental improvisation. In America in the 1970s Jazz musicians such...

Originally aired 3/26/12
Listen
Read More »
RADIO // Improvisions
"Free" Improvisation
Hosted by Ted Gordon
Radio show

Musical freedom can mean freedom from rules, limits, structure, tonality or rhythm; but it can also mean freedom from an economic and legal system that stifles innovation. WFMU's Free Music Archive is the source for these legally free tracks.

Musical freedom can mean many things: freedom from rules, limits, structure, tonality or rhythm; but it can also mean freedom from an economic and legal system that stifles innovation and interrupts the flourishing gift economy which has developed...

Originally aired 2/20/12
Listen
Read More »
RADIO // Improvisions
The Joy of Influence
Hosted by Ted Gordon
Radio show

Leaving aside tracing influence in composed music, which is its own can of worms, this episode is a meditation on influence in improvised music, with Cecil Taylor, John Oswald, Anthony Braxton, Naked City, Sun Ra, John Fahey, Bill Frisell,more.

The literary critic Harold Bloom, who I was lucky enough to have as a professor for a brief stint in college, famously wrote of the anxiety of influence--the concept of every creative act really being a misreading of some previous text, going all...

Originally aired 1/23/12
Listen
Read More »
RADIO // Improvisions
Free Japan
Hosted by Ted Gordon
Radio show

A sampling of the influential cross-cultural current of avant-garde music in Japan in the early 70s, when it erupted, with tracks by Toshi Ichiyanagi, Takehisa Kosugi, Masayuki "Jojo" Takayanagi, Keiji Haino, Kaoru Abe, Yamataka Eye, and may others.

This episode explores the cross-cultural current of the avant-garde in Japan, specifically in the early 70s, where it erupted in composition, free jazz, film, and where it would continue to influence countless future musicians, both in Japan and in...

Originally aired 10/31/11
Listen
Read More »
RADIO // Improvisions
Jams
Hosted by Ted Gordon
Radio show

The "jam" is an emergent, instant, singular phenomenon. Here we have examples from Krzystof Penderecki, Masayugi "Jojo" Takayanagi, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Don Cherry, Peter Brötzmann/Fred van Hove/Han Bennick, Werner Lüdi Sunnymoon and more.

We've all experienced it: whether in your parents' basement at age 15, in a drum circle in the park, or on stage at a jazz festival, the "jam" is an emergent, instant, singular phenomenon. Some have rules to stick by; others can go in any direction...

Originally aired 9/26/11
Listen
Read More »
RADIO // Improvisions
Worlds Collide
Hosted by Ted Gordon
Radio show

This episode looks at the collision/fusion/embrace between American Jazz and the established musical traditions of India and Africa. We’ll hear from Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, Kadri Gopalnath, Shankar Jaikishan, Archie Shepp and more!

This episode looks at the collision/fusion/embrace between American Jazz and the established musical traditions of India and Africa. Though not without its share of orientalist and other slightly problematic implications, this early borrowing and...

Originally aired 8/22/11
Listen
Read More »
See all episodes »
Improvisions