Ensemble & Ensemble of Me – What I Think About When I Think About Improvisation

Ivar Grydeland

This exposition is a copy of Ivar Grydeland's artistic research fellowship project (2011-2015) at The Norwegian Academy of Music, financed by The Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme. The exposition was redesigned within The Research Catalogue in 2024. The content is identical to the original documentation. ________________________ Ensemble & Ensemble of Me is an artistic research fellowship project carried out at the Norwegian Academy of Music, as part of The Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme between 2011 and 2015. In this project I produced solo improvisations deriving from the music of two improvising ensembles to which I belong: Dans les arbres and Huntsville, and I produced collective improvisations with the ensembles. The project’s key questions: - What are my concepts when improvising with the ensembles and when improvising alone? - How do the ensemble improvisations inform my solo improvisations? - What do I think about when I think about our and my own improvisations? The Haruki Murakami-paraphrase in the sub-heading indicates a process of on-going reflection upon what I regard as key aspects when I improvise. More specifically, what I regard as key aspects in the music of Dans les arbres and Huntsville, as well as for my own solo improvisations. These reflections reveal key aspects and main challenges that emerged during my attempts to create solo works informed by the ensembles. The reflections are chiefly documented in the form of a personal encyclopaedia. The encyclopaedia includes audio and visual examples, both from the final artistic results and from artistic activity during the project.

Ensemble & Ensemble of Me

What I think about when I think about improvisation

Bleed

When my musical material bleeds into others’ musical material
When the others’ sounds and musical ideas bleed into mine
It is before polyphonic material forms composites
It is when polyphonic material is on its way to merge
It is an early stadium in the process of creating composites
It is when something is on the brink of becoming something else
It is deciding to let it bleed
It is when I incorporate a bell stroke from Ingar, consider it part of my arpeggio

Usage

1. From Dans les arbres' “La Transparence” on Canopée (ECM 2012) (00:19)

2. From Dans les arbres' “L'Immatériel” on Canopée (ECM 2012) (00:18)

3. The electronic tabla machine bled into the banjo and the guitars in Huntsville's “Arrow and Rain” (00:50) and “Eco” (00:47), both on Eco, Arches & Eras (Rune Grammofon, 2008)

4. Material that bleeds into other material has been the main motivation and the origin of the video investigations within the project, leading up to Video Ensemble performed as part of the Final Artistic Presentation, 22 April 2015. The different video layers bleed into each other, visually, and form composites, something more, or at least something else, than the sum of each of the layers. It is thus linked to the moirés. Here is an excerpt:

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Ivar Grydeland - Ensemble & Ensemble of Me – What I Think About When I Think About Improvisation - 2024