Sound research

I have been looking for some examples of improvisation in music. During my tutorial with Tom we discussed Free Jazz so I had a little look for examples of this kind of impromptu performance. The following are examples from Youtube. I have copied and pasted the synopsis from each Youtube video in red and my thoughts in white text.



Sabu Toyozumi (percussion), Luo Chao-yun (pipa), Henry Lowther (trumpet), John Russell (guitar), Lol Coxhill (soprano saxophone) at Fete Quaqua 2009. John Russell's annual festival of free improvised music. Filmed by Helen Petts at the Vortex Jazz Club, London, 16th August 2009.

*Edited on 19/17/10*
I have been in contact with John Russell who has been extremely helpful. I joined the 'Friends of Mopomoso' network and have been discussing the nature of improvisation with him. He invited me to see the Mopomoso session at The Vortex Jazz Club. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and got a much better idea about the nature of musical improvisation and met a lot of lovely people.



Marcio Mattos improvise in Sao Paulo/Brazil in the concert of free improvisation, 19.10.2006

Marcio Mattos plays the cello with a high level of drama, using suspense and tension in his performance. Improvisation seems to be more apt for a longer time-scale as the performers can't really be reined in to a exact time scale without infringing on the nature of improvisation itself.



This is a pretty amazing video of Ethan Winer playing 37 separate cello parts to create one song. He even plays the percussion parts on his cello. It was recorded on 23 tracks using 37 plug-in effects. He spent hundreds of hours on this project so its worth a listen.

This is worth noting just because it was all done on a cello, it gives an idea of the range of sounds available.