Reflections on musical outcome
This is a personal reflection on the musical outcome, based on where I see that the potential and challenges lies for future explorations. This section can preferably be read after having become familiar with different parts of the musical output.
One common denominator for the album releases is that improvisation is applied to the repertoire, i.e., 20th-century Western classical music, while preserving essential qualities of the original. When considering different ways of adapting the repertoire, it should be pointed out that it would be relatively easy to take many of the pieces here and treat them as jazz numbers by adapting rhythmic characteristics, harmonies, melodic playing techniques, and placinh their themes in the characteristic 'head-solo-head' (theme-improvisation-theme) form of jazz performance. This was not the approach taken here. A common denominator of all the recordings was to create versions that were genuinely connected to the originals, without diminishing their artistic value and without resorting to standard solutions. While adaptations may have been made in the areas mentioned above (form, rhythm, harmony, melody), it was important that such adaptations were musically justified in one way or another, as discussed in the previous chapter, rather than following a given template.
One aspect was finding a balance between the compositions and the improvised elements. Taking the pieces that we adapted for the All in Twilight album – All in Twilight, Utanmyra-variationer, and Fuoco – this was something we worked hard on achieving, which I think is reflected in the results; improvisations weren't there for our self-realization or to display virtuosity. This means that on one of the tracks, Utanmyra-variationer, it takes almost 5 minutes until we reach the first added improvisation (excluding ornaments). The strive for balance was also a part of the processes for the second album, Reimaginations, but with slightly different proportions; considering that all the musicians were from a Scandinavian jazz context, it was more prioritized to leave room for improvisational freedom.
Another aspect was to establish a connection with the music. As described earlier, this was sometimes aided by using musical references, such as recordings of other musicians crossing musical genres, as we were 'bridging the gap' between the piece and the new musical context. This became even more important on the second album, Reimaginations, as the distance seemed greater to the source material when approached with ensembles of jazz improvisers. In contrast, the pieces written for classical guitar for the All in Twilight album would still sound relatively close to the original. But the question of establishing a connection wasn't primarily about bringing in other musical examples; first and foremost, it was a question of what we would hear in a piece that resonated with us, and – when preparing a piece for a particular constellation – how it could be channeled through the voices of the musicians.
I'll now consider three 'focal points' – as referred to in the previous chapter – that I perceive to have a particular potential for musical exploration; the score, the context of the piece, and the expression of the piece.
First, The score. On one hand, the versions that are presented of All in Twilight, Utanmyra-variationer and Fuoco show that there are ways of working with an 'every note of the score' approach while incorporating improvisation in a chamber music setting that is close to the original instrumentation. Fuoco deserves a special mention in this case, where we added improvisation as a layer on top of the original piece, using overdubbed improvisation for the recording.
But, as noted with Variazioni and Forest Musicians (unreleased), working directly from the score can also be a fruitful approach in ensemble contexts when combined with free, collective improvisation and ways of moving in and out of the score. In such situations, it often seemed as the score offered a valuable resistance to the improvised sections, meaning that they could come out with a quality of being 'charged' with something. Inevitably, these improvisations bore traces of the pieces to which they were connected, typically in ways that defy analysis.
Recording 11.8. By the Still Waters (ending), quintet version. Final presentation concert, The Department of Music, NTNU, Trondheim, 2024-10-23.
While the first version has a chamber-musical quality, enhanced by Söderqvist's arco melody, the second and third versions bring out other sides, with a tangible increase in intensity. While the addition of new instruments inevitably contributes to this, the differences in these versions cannot be reduced to a matter of instrumentation. The main ingredients are arguably the individual contributions of the performers, through their particular voices and what they bring to the music. And a crucial element here is the increased rhythmic intensity added by the drums, in the hands of Danemo (septet version) and Olsson (quintet version).
The second aspect relates to the context of the piece. As described earlier, the version of Utanmyra-variationer was created with an ambition of connecting the piece with its roots in the Swedish folk melody, as recorded by Swedish jazz pianist Jan Johansson. This holds an interesting potential for the exploration of other repertoire, as an impetus to look for things beyond the score, as there might be other things that improvisers can draw inspiration from in the sphere of the piece.
The third aspect that I see as having a particular potential is focusing on the expression of the piece. As heard in Cortège and Leggiero, emphasizing expressive qualities can work as a way of enhancing aspects of the original piece that are prioritized over pitches, as a way of going beyond the score. In Cortège, the playful quality was found particularly in our way of 'improvising our way' into the melody. With Leggiero, the focus on its raw, somewhat brutal quality – with its 'primitive fifths', as Crawford Seeger referred to them – provided something to hold on to when transferring it to a group of improvisers. This was further enhanced when working with a larger group, as in this nonet version from the presentation concert:
Form
While I do believe that the versions created here are generally effective in their overall balance, there is a particular challenge that should be addressed when it comes to adapting musical forms. Any time the original form is altered through repetition, extension, or addition, there’s a potential risk of disrupting the momentum and overall balance of a given composition. This is a limitation of the approaches to form that we've examined; beyond considering how they can be approached for the purpose of opening up pieces and adding improvisation, there has been no real analysis of the effects of such actions on the overall dramaturgy.
When it comes to the momentum of the music, reviewer Jörgen Lundmark (2023) pointed out – in reference to the third movement of Takemitsu’s All in Twilight – that its ”worrying character loses some intensity" [tredje satsens oroande karaktär förlorar en del intensitet] (p.58), something which may relate to the additions and extended passages that we made. It can be added that this is an inherent challenge with the approach of the 'every note in the score' approach, as repetitions/additions/extensions by definition make pieces longer, sometimes considerably so. While a general sense of balance can be a good guiding star in such negotiations, at times it might be better to realize that we can't keep everything from the original and add improvised passages. In such cases, the approach of replacing composed sections with improvisation may be a better alternative if the priority is to preserve the balance of the overall form. For instance, in a piece based on a ternary A-B-A form, the most obvious approach would be to replace the B section with improvisation, as was done with Leggiero. Also, working with layers/combinations is another option.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics presents another type of challenge, if the ambition is to follow the aesthetics of the original, as it can be more difficult to evaluate than other aspects. For the adaptations presented here, this was not a prioritized area, which is to some extent reflected in the musical results. Firstly, despite efforts to go into Takemitsu’s music in-depth, with an emphasis on musical language, it can be argued that some of the adaptions that we did in All in Twilight aren't quite in line with his aesthetics. For instance, there is a certain quality known as ma, which can be described as a gap, an interval, or an intense silence from which sound is born. In Takemitsu’s words:
Ma is the mother of sound and should be very vivid. Ma is living space, more than actual space… The concept of ma is one special form of recognition in the universe, in the cosmos. (Takemitsu et al., 1989)
While there's a sense of working with silence as a building block at times, such as in the introduction to All in Twilight I, we are often more 'European' in our approach to sound and silence on these recordings. Also, Takemitsu’s concept of time can be challenging to grasp for a Western performer; in some of the improvised passages, the shifting time signatures are adapted to more common meters. This is the case, for instance, with the piano solo on All in Twilight III, where the alternation between 12/16, 11/16 of the original is replaced by 12/16 – perceived as 6/8 – in the solo section.
Another example can be found in the (unreleased) recording of Prélude en berceuse, where there’s a palpable feeling that our performer aesthetic is in the foreground and Dutilleux’s piano piece somewhere in the distant. This relates to the fusion/world music-like character that is part of the group's approach to making music, often based on energy and rhythmic intensity, but also the sounds of electric instruments – bass and guitar – and drums, aspects that may not be immediately compatible with a classical piano piece.
This doesn't necessarily diminish the musical value of these versions, as they seemed to bring out a lot in our playing, it is just a fact that preserving the aesthetics of the repertoire wasn’t as prioritized as other aspects.