I’m pretty sure no one will ever see this, but…

Improvisation is ultimately decided by the person performing. John Cage was trying to take self out of the work as much as possible to let his work mimic nature. The idea of improvisation, in the most liberal sense, is still one of complete control by the composer, while Cage’s definition of chance and discipline was to create music in a way that you’re not really the one creating it at all. Of course there are inevitable contradictions, but Cage really did stray away from any sense of improvisation…

“I believe that no matter how many people were in those lines for their Galapagos shows (I wasn’t one of them, unfortunately), that scene is still just mostly preaching to the same kinds of people”

Exactly! The success of the New Amsterdam scene is wonderful, but a somewhat localized one. In order to curate something that speaks to wider sensibilities, the curator has to place together Scenes that no one would dream of commingling, and yet, once they’ve been created, loosen the boundaries between communities of music and create wider audiences. Ronen’s Wordless Music series is a nod in that direction, but it could be more radicalized…
the new Bang on a Can Asphalt Orchestra project is a good example of guerilla exposure of new sounds to a fairly broad sampling of people. For me, the most interesting thing is a contemporary music program with complimentary sounds that lacks the obvious dotted lines that people within their respective scenes would make.

John Cage

This reminds me of Miles Davis’ famous suggestion to John Coltrane that he just “take the horn out of his mouth” whenever he found that he couldn’t stop playing 🙂

Larger point being that trying to isolate different streams of concurrent (sp?) musical development (i.e. Black Mountain from Bebop) is silly because we are all influencing each other whether we want to admit it or not.

Kind of like a delta – Cage’s own natural / musical world analogy…

“How can you talk about Black Mountain and not talk about Charlie Parker?” Greg Tate

Joe, I’ve thought about this very question quite a bit. I personally want and need my performing ensembles and ideally my audiences to reflect my own world. I am interested in participating in creative environments that are diverse in gender, age, and race. The composer George Lewis talks about his own frustration performing and improvising at shows that included no women for instance. I believe that if you want to combat this sort of narrow mindedness, you need to find kindred spirits who may not be on your day-to-day radar, and invite them into your fold. Lewis did just this and left some people confused by his choice of collaborators. That’s one price you’ll pay if you already have the attention of a small, devoted “scene” I guess.

Various and different artistic “scenes” are influencing each other all the time – although this fact can go unacknowledged by the press, professors, or even the musicians themselves. John Cage spoke about his dislike of improvisation and jazz. Which to me is kind of insane, because so much of his music is about improvisation.

Like that comment Sarah Palin made about Alaska being a “microcosm of America”, the scenes around New Amsterdam, Bang on a Can, et al. are also not indicative of the totality of the new music scene, just as Alaska is no avatar for the US. And while I really respect New Amsterdam and what they have accomplished and have some of their artists in my group Numinous (Jody Redhage, for example) and work with some them in other capacities (Darcy Argue, in my own composer scene, Pulse), I believe that no matter how many people were in those lines for their Galapagos shows (I wasn’t one of them, unfortunately), that scene is still just mostly preaching to the same kinds of people, with the same backgrounds and likes-just a younger, hipper, but generally a similarly educated version of the same upper-crust “blue-hairs” we’d stereotypically expect to find at opera and symphony concerts. There always seems to be a bit of a clique-ish, insiderness to most scenes (think of the record shop workers in High Fidelity) but I think the real question is can you turn a scene, filled with those like minds and similar backgrounds and education, and broaden it into a movement, filled with different kinds of people not like themselves? I would hope that’s one of the goals of any of those scenes, I know it is one of mine.

There’s so much music to explore in NYC, it’s impossible to be on top of it all.

Whenever I meet a musician and mention one or two other players I think they might know, 9 times out of 10 they’ll reply “Huh! I don’t know him/her…”

And yet, there is a 6 degrees of separation thing happening in NYC when it comes to anyone who makes noise with an instrument.

However, when I read PR that repeatedly touts how X composer or ensemble is “Breaking barriers” and/or “Tearing down walls” etc…all I can think of is how many walls that are still up waiting to be knocked down.

But maybe all that means is we all have plenty to keep us (musicians and PR people) busy…

Right on. Why paint yourself into a corner? “I would never belong to a club that would have me as a member.”

I think it’s important for composers to consistently push themselves out of their comfort zones – and that can include your borough. With that in mind, the “scene” as described by Amanda seems strangely narrow to me. No mention of musicians around John Zorn and the Stone. No mention of Harlem or the Bronx or any African American artists. No description of the forward thinking jazz and world ensembles you find at Barbes and other small clubs.

I mean…I get it – she’s not trying to throw a net over a zeitgeist. But she certainly doesn’t mirror my experiences here in NYC (going on 12 years now…) creating music.

Someone many years from now will rewrite history and break it down for us.