In my formative years as a composer/performer I explored improvisation, but did not feel compelled to make it the central focus of my work. Since I had developed a high level of virtuosity as an instrumentalist, I felt that in improvisatory settings there was a tendency to fall back on familiar techniques rather than developing totally new approaches to performance, which was my goal in developing my hybrid acoustic-electronic instrument, the mutantrumpet. I was very attracted by the systematic musical structures of minimalist music, and I embraced a more conceptual attitude to composition, relying on various processes to take me away from playing what I wanted to play at any given moment. This was also due to my work with Petr Kotik’s S.E.M. Ensemble performing the music of John Cage, often with the composer’s supervision. With Cage’s music, it was all about not doing what you want to do, and following a predetermined directive that was specifically designed to take you away from your own desire-based choices about what to play at any given time. Despite my propensity for notated pieces, improvisation did creep into my works from the very beginning. The reason for this is the subject of this paper.
via Inevitable Improvisations | Vague Terrain.
