The Practice of Musical Improvisation

Rezensionen / Stimmen

There's much to be learned from these interviews, and their artful construction. The book is a great resource, and itself an artistic creation. * The Wire * The Practice of Musical Improvisation is not a treatise on improvisation, but an investigation into its axioms and stakes, a series of interrogations of its main contemporary suspects. It thus proposes a set of endogenous discourses, firmly rooted in practice, and whose diversity is the only force capable of revealing the process of improvisation. * Matthieu Saladin, Artist, Musician, and Associate Professor in Sound Art, University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis, France * Filled with poetic and provocative thoughts culled from a wealth of interviews with creative practitioners, this book offers substantive grist for the discursive mill of improvisation studies. Key ontological and epistemological questions arise, but the experiential dimension of how improvisation feels shines through most clearly in these engaging pages. Initially not having the speaker's name attached to their words may feel disorienting, but it allows the ideas to swirl around untethered from the personalities who conjured them and offers the initiated reader a chance to guess who said what. * David Borgo, Professor and Chair, Department of Music, University of California, San Diego, USA * Nearly forty years ago, Derek Bailey published Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music, which explored musical improvisation through interviews with a wide range of practitioners. Denzler and Guionnet's The Practice of Musical Improvisation renews Bailey's project, gathering illuminating and candid remarks from some of the most prominent improvisers working today. The book delves deeply into the creative process, the practice of listening and their social and political contexts, revealing the complexity and joy of improvised music. * Christoph Cox, Professor of Philosophy at Hampshire College, USA, and author of Sonic Flux: Sound, Art, and Metaphysics (2018) *