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

Material

“Perhaps it hinges on the question of flexibility. Too much destroys the music, but too little destroys the improvisation." ¹

In Dans les arbres, Huntsville, and my solo work in this project, I find that I am looking for flexible musical material.

What is flexible musical material?
How is it flexible?
What makes it flexible?
Is it about (variation in) size?
Portions?
Is it perforated?

Can everything be flexible? (yes)
Does everything have to be flexible? (yes)
Can it be rigid? (yes, sure but eventually it will be flexible)
Can I make use of musical material (i am trying but i always end up)
that serves rigidity? (treating it as if it was flexible)

(it is a natural consequence of both)
(boredom and necessity)

How weak can musical material be without being nothing?
How pregnant can musical material be and still merge?

Does musical material have to be able to merge or fuse with something else?
Bleed into something else? (yes. see above!)

Probably not.
But musical material that has the ability to do so, invites.

Does musical material have to be able to be moulded, and developed into something else? (yes. see above!)

Probably not.
But musical material that has this ability, opens for a flexibility that often is required.

¹ John Butcher in "Freedom and Sound - This time it's personal" http://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD35/PoD35Butcher.html (Accessed 15 October 2015)

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