Live at The Royal Room: improvisation in music and life

(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

James Falzone: All right, thank you, everybody. Thanks for coming out on this warm Saturday afternoon. It's a strange time to be, you know, in a club. But we're so glad you're here. I'm James, as Lawrence just said. This is Wayne Horvitz on piano, Abbey Blackwell on the bass, Ray Larsen on trumpet, and Rocky Martin on the drums. The idea of this podcast is to talk about improvisation, which is kind of a writ large, and we'll have a rich conversation about improvisation.

And we're going to do a lot of playing. We're going to start with a composition of mine, which is called "G.F.O.P.," and if you know what that means, I was going to say I'd buy you a drink, but the bar's not open, so the next time you're here, I'll buy you a drink.

(music - "G.F.O.P.")

LP: Okay, that's a great place to start. Before I jump in directly with James and the band—as I was getting to know James throughout this process and we were preparing and spending some time together, there was a phrase he used multiple times, which was, "This music can be magical, but it's not magic." As a layperson who loves the music, consumes it, and studies and follows it, I'm not sure I agree because it always seems like magic when I see it done.

To be this close to it, I understand more about magical nature. But I wonder, my first question for you, James, is what are we talking about when we say improvised music, and how is that different, or how does that contrast with the fact that we're sitting here with music stands and sheet music, and sort of what's improvised and what's not here?

What's going on?

James Falzone: It's a great question. We were talking about how there are a lot of great questions these days, and that's a great question about this music. The music we just played fits on three pieces of sheet music, but it could easily have just fit on one or two. Typically, when you play a piece that fits on two pieces of sheet music, you're talking about a piece that might just last a minute or two.

And so that piece, we could have extended that for 15 more minutes if we wanted to, which gives you an idea that what's on the page is not much of what we're creating. As you heard, there was a set of composed elements in that particular tune. Some areas of counterpoint — (sings) "ba ba dee do ba do dee" — that's a melody I wrote, a bassline that goes along with it, some different back and forth, and so forth.

But then we venture into an improvisation, which could have gone in many different directions, right? We decided to do a kind of interesting juxtaposition of a duo between Ray and me, and then going to a trio that was cued back and forth between myself and Wayne, and that had a kind of like, trying to throw off the kilter about when we were going to be able to indulge the improvisation.

So, every time we got into something, we'd get interrupted by the trio. Every time they got into something, they'd get interrupted by the duo until it eventually lapsed into a full quintet. So that whole section there was improvised until I cued us back through some material back into the melodic material.

And this is a tried and tested way of making music in a jazz context, right? If you've listened to a lot of historic, traditional jazz, this is how most of that music is made. There's some kind of a melodic shape of what we tend to call ahead, and then there's an improvisation on that melodic material, chord changes, etc.

Then, you go back to the original material. This is how the greats of Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, and others have made music for many decades. The music we're creating in this ensemble and much of what I do in my work has elements of that, yet much of the improvisation is not based on chord changes or the melodic material.

We will play a composition of mine later on that has form, rhythm, melody, and harmonies. So we could show a little bit of different ways we're improvising. But in this case, kind of getting to your question, we're essentially using the melodic material that I created as a springboard for our improvising.

So I think when I say often that it's magical, but it's not magic, part of the interest of this discussion is to try to pull the hood up a little bit and look under the hood of what it means to do this music. And there's a lot that goes into the creation of a piece like you just heard that is based on a lot of pre-knowledge, thought, and rehearsal; although this ensemble didn't rehearse that much, the kind of collective rehearsal that we've all done and individual practice and so forth.

All that comes together to make that possible; therefore, it's magical and wonderful, and music is magical and wonderful. But no smoke and mirrors are going on here; it's a lot of hard work, practice, knowledge about what's happening with the music, what's possible, and then the interaction of some really fine musicians up on the stage.

LP: How does an improvised or an improvisatory ensemble rehearse? What are you rehearsing?

James Falzone: Yeah, so we rehearsed only essentially that written material. So this band, as far as I know, this collection of musicians, had never played together until Thursday. Okay. So, this past Thursday, we had a brief one-and-a-half-hour rehearsal.

I've played with each of these musicians in different contexts. I have an ensemble called the Division Ensemble, which has Ray and Rocky in it. The pianist and bass player were not available to be here today, so I called two of my favorite musicians, Wayne and Abbey. Our rehearsal was just to review the written material, and even in the midst of rehearsing, we spent a little time improvising and creating the concepts of how we wanted to use the improvisation. Still, it really was to review the written material on the page.

And we will give an example here, too, of an improvisation that has nothing written. We will just create something from nothing.

LP: That point reminds me of something else I learned in preparing for today and some other lessons that James gave me through some reading material, which is essentially that there's no wall between the audience and the performer in terms of the ability to be improvisers.

Something that stood out very strongly for me is that we all improvise constantly, whether it's conversation. I thought about it the other day while driving, especially here in Seattle. You know, I have the maps application open. I have my destination where I want to go, but I'm constantly forced to react and take in my surroundings.

Some people do it when they're cooking. They may follow a recipe, but they may deviate. They may like something a little bit more. They may encounter something in their refrigerator, and there are all these ways in which we improvise constantly, and we never think about those as being magic. But the results often are magical.

We get there early. We get there at all. We get there in one piece. We have a wonderful meal. We have a stimulating conversation. And so I think it's really important for listeners of this music to realize that they have all of the same capabilities, maybe not the technical tools in the toolbox. But the human capabilities to be improvisers.

James Falzone: I really appreciate this comment. The great George Lewis, a wonderful composer, trombone player, and scholar of improvisation, has said beautifully that improvisation is a way of being. Right? It's not just a technique; it's not just a thing that musicians, dancers, or comics do.

We are all improvisers. It's a way of being. It's the way that human beings navigate life. Right? And so, part of why I think that improvised music is so fascinating to experience as a listener, as a participant, is because it's mimicking, it's mirroring a bit, as a metaphor of what it's like to go through life.

Right? And so, as you, again, pull the hood up a little bit and look under and say, "How is this working?" You realize, "Oh, I understand how they're improvising. I also have a little experience of that in my own work." I've talked with many, many people about improvisation. You know, surgeons, you might think, that's not a place you want to see improvisation, but it is in surgery, and yet a surgeon will talk about what it's like to improvise.

You have no idea what you're going to experience. Right, I've talked with martial arts experts who talk about fighting as an improvisation. We've talked about, I've talked with farmers about improvisation. It's a fascinating way to think about what it means to experience life. I think cooking is also a good metaphor and one that I indulge in quite a bit.

LP: Well, before we get to some more music, can you just tell me a little bit or tell the audience about the role of time in improvisation?

James Falzone: Yes, music is an art form that exists in time. That may seem obvious or not to you, but what musicians do is we're carving up time. Composers do that when they're creating music.

In writing it down, you think about how you want the audience to experience time. I had a composition teacher once; Bob Brookmeyer, some of you may know that name, is a well-known jazz composer who's passed on now, and I brought a piece to him, and he said, "You know, this isn't very good."

He's kind of a ragged, curmudgeonly guy. He said, "This is not a very good composition." He said, "Just remember, every time you compose something, you're taking the audience closer to their death." (laughter) And I just thought, "Oh my God, that sounds awful." I had known, I did not want to, you know, do that. But what he meant is that I'm taking up your time.

If I'm composing a piece of music and you're experiencing that and listening to it, you are now, you know, you've just spent 10 minutes with me in my composition. So I better make that time good for you, right? So musicians are constantly carving up time. A great writer named Stephen Nachmanovitch wrote a book called Free Play, which I like to talk about as the gateway to improvisation studies.

It's a wonderful, very readable book, translated into many languages. Nachmanovitch says that there are three kinds of time in music. There's the inspiration, the time of inspiration, the time of realization, and the time of communication.

Inspiration is when somebody's conceiving of the music. They haven't written anything down yet but are inspired to create something. That could be a commission or an influence that makes them say, "I want to express myself in this way." There's that time.

Then there's the realization, the time of realization in which you might be writing it down or recording it. There's that time in which it gets kind of imprinted in some way.

And then there's the communication, usually which transpires through performance. In improvised music, all three of those are happening in the now, right?

So, if we look at a piece by Bach, Bach wrote the cello suites in the 18th century. He was inspired to create that piece. He realized them, wrote them down, and they have been communicated and performed ever since. Very, very famous pieces of music that get played all the time, right? So, that whole process has taken centuries and will continue for centuries.

In this music, all of those three things- inspiration, realization, and communication- have been condensed into the moment of the now and the present moment, right? And I think musicians all over the world are very, very thoughtful about what it means to be in the moment, to be thinking about the now, and letting all that inspiration, all that realization, all that communication happen within the context of a performance. And before we play the next piece, which I'll introduce here, you might think about a definition of improvisation, right?

Which has traditionally been thought of as creation through performance, right? So, it is the creation of something by performing it instead of creating it and then allowing it to be performed. So there's that conflation of these three kinds of time. We're going to play a piece, another piece of mine.

All the music today is my compositions. This is called "There is Often Another Way." What I want you to listen for here is that there will be some simultaneity. That means there will be improvisation from one person in the ensemble while the rest of us are playing a melodic shape.

Then that will switch, and somebody else will improvise while the others play that same melodic shape. There'll be some kind of improvising in the midst of that. And you might also listen a bit to Rocky back there on drums and percussion and how he colors the whole thing, right?

There'll be melodic shapes and improvisation. And then there's all this sort of wash of color coming from the drums. And maybe we'll even get Rocky to talk a little about how he's conceiving what he's doing as he colors this piece. So here is "There Is Often Another Way."

(music - "There Is Often Another Way")

LP: Tell me a little bit about the choices everyone has before them in a piece like that, specifically for the, what I would call the sort of supporting cast when the front line is soloing, what's going on, and what are the other players experiencing and choosing between?

James Falzone: I'd like to turn it over to some of these folks to answer that great question.

But this music is less about the foreground background or the frontline backline. It is a communal experience. That piece was very communal, but I'd love to hear maybe Rocky, if you're up for it, grabbing the mic back there. To listen to what Rocky is thinking about, he probably has the least amount of material there in terms of what it is to play on.

And so he's listening, experiencing, and responding to what we're doing. So, Rocky, thoughts about your choices back there on the drums?

Rocky Martin: It's inspiring to play with all of you and how the music breathes. It's always the now and the listening of it all. So, my role is to color but change each time the melody presents itself.

And this time around, it kind of felt like an ocean to me, or we're on the bank of an ocean, and it's some sort of rising with the waves each time, and I am changing depths and changing colors and the way the band responded I'm responding. It's some sort of a crashing third time; we are moving forward with more momentum. It's a pulse. But there's a pulse the whole time.

Words are so interesting. That's what I'll say for now. (laughter)

James Falzone: So there wasn't any traditional pulse happening in that piece, and yet you just described it as having a pulse, which I love, and I agree with you a hundred percent. But maybe you could just talk a bit about how you think of a pulse when there isn't one.

That sounds very mystical, but…

Rocky Martin: Like one of my heroes, his name is Milford Graves, so Milford talks about our biorhythms. So we all have heart rates and heart rate variability, and that's always in cycles, and he says if you have the same heart rate every single time, that's dangerous. You want to have a flow, a pulse, and a shift. But all that being said, while we were playing, especially the second time, it felt more of a… I'm trying to create a more consistent pulse; I gave that more clearly the third time. But we're not quite in time that second time, but I'm feeling the band having this consistent cyclic wave feeling.

James Falzone: Yeah. It's that sense of feeling time in the moment, inspiration, realization, and communication that kind of contracted all into one that's going on.

LP: A lot of what you've talked about so far has to do with almost a best-case scenario; everybody's feeling it, hearing it, and responding to it. What happens when there is no consensus or a dispute about the direction the music should take? Is that playing out?

James Falzone: I don't hire those people. I don't want them on the bandstand. (laughter) It's fascinating. I don't think it happens as often as people might think. But when it happens, it's just a negotiation between great musicians who are hearing things, responding to them, and trying to edge somebody into what you want them to do.

So, for instance, in that particular piece, there's a melodic shape that Ray and I can play exactly as written or not. And at that time, I loved playing in unison with Ray. We have similar approaches and can play in tune with each other. So, I was kind of edging him along to play more of the melody.

And after a couple of cycles, you may have heard he started to do that, right? So, in my mind, I thought, "Oh, I'd love to hear a little bit more of Ray's melody." So, all I did was play a little bit more melody. At some point, Ray just started to play more melodies with me. So, was that a mistake or something that wasn't realized in perfection?

Not at all. It was just, "Hmm, I'd like to see this shift in the moment, shift a different way." And so by having really sensitive musicians up here listening to each other and feeling each other in terms of the music and that pulse that Rocky's talking about, anything is possible. And suppose we extend that idea of the metaphor of improvisation as being akin to life, or "a way of being," to quote George Lewis again. In that case, you may experience that in communication with people in your lives and work, relationships with your families, and so forth.

That's very much how it's like to just interact with human beings on a regular basis. It's not really about mistakes or imperfections but about how we make this be more in tune with one another, more in tune with what is equitable and sensible for those around us.

LP: Take us a little closer to death.

James Falzone: (laughter) Oh, that's a great phrase. Yeah. Easy to do. It's a great cue to play more music, and then we'll make sure we hear from everybody in the group at different points. We're going to play another composition of mine, which is called "Brooklyn Lines." I wrote it in a residency I had in Brooklyn several years ago.

It's a spiky melody with a lot of counterpoint so you can listen for that. And then it gets into what I call a kind of free jazz aesthetic, which is just a high energy, fast-paced jazz pulse in which Ray and I are going to improvise. Then, it will switch gears and go into something completely different.

And so you might listen to the different approaches to improvisation. You might listen to the counterpoint between the different lines, how they interact, and how they influence our improvisation. So here's "Brooklyn Lines."

(music - "Brooklyn Lines")

LP: I'd be curious to hear from James and some other band members about the role of focus and attention and how you maintain that during a piece. I guess the better way to ask would be about situational awareness. I think about it in the context of a basketball team moving up and down the court, and who's where and when they're in and out of position. What's that experience like amongst the players on the stage?

James Falzone: Yeah, I'm going to turn this over to Wayne if you don't mind here in a second because I'd love to hear how Wayne was thinking about that piece.

But one of the things that's so special about, I think, about experiencing improvised music is that what we are doing is both creating and reacting at the same moment, right? You're making something happen, and you're anticipating what's going to happen. And if you follow me, you're also making sense of what happened.

So you're making at the moment, moving into the future, and responding to what happened. And I refer to this often: people who know me and spend time with me, I'm always talking about the already and the not yet. The already is that which has just happened or is happening.

And yet, we're also dealing with the not-yet. And you're just in that middle space between those two things. To your point, that takes a tremendous amount of concentration. You cannot lose yourself in the music. You do lose yourself in the music, but part of your brain is constantly thinking about what's happening, what's going to happen, what happened.

Wayne, you've had a lot of notes to play on that piece, but you also had to improvise. And so, tell us a little about what's going through your mind and the role of the piano in a tune like that.

Wayne Horvitz: Well, I'm not sure I had to improvise; that is a way to put it.

James Falzone: I told you to improvise! (laughter)

Wayne Horvitz: I was looking forward to improvising.

No, I just think your original question, Lawrence, was essentially about… Say it one more time, the very first thing you said.

LP: I'm curious about the role or balance between attention and focus and situational awareness.

Wayne Horvitz: That was the phrase I was looking for, yeah. Well, one important thing for me is that I don't think the line between improvised and written music is all that great.

I think it's all just one essential arc. For someone who started really late and didn't have typical classical or strong jazz training, it's when I'm reading the music that I have to worry about my awareness the most.

Once, I was with a friend of mine, and we played this long piece for two pianos, two clarinets, and a violin. And I didn't finish the score. It was through a silent film. So there were about 10 minutes that I never got around to finishing. So, I improvised with the saxophone player the whole time. And my friend, Misha, turned to me and said, "Wayne, that was the only time you looked relaxed during the entire hour and a half." (laughter)

And so I also think that if you kind of come up the way I did, which was listening to rock and roll and blues bands and stuff, I mean, improvising is almost like the comfort zone, you know, but the awareness is, I don't know, I don't think about it that much, but it's in your body. You have to be there all the time.

And I feel like that's a lifelong struggle of not always being there, you know, and all sorts of things. I mean, it brings you back to when you were talking about when everybody isn't in the same zone, one of the classic things, like, we're going to play a piece, if I'm not mistaken, that will be completely improvised.

One of the classic things about that is that in everything you've heard so far, James, in this case, cause he's the leader and wrote the music, has kind of control about when we move on. In an improvised music piece, one of the classic things you find is the people you love to play with because you almost always agree about when the piece ends.

And the people you never want to play with again because you've ended the piece seven times, and they keep playing. And that is a thing about, you know, I think it's overstated. Again, I think it's overstated about improvised versus structured music versus written music. I guess classical players are improvising to some extent all the time.

And the way that they experience time is the same thing. What just happened and what's going to happen is as important if you're playing Bach as it is. And also, I think it's important to mention that 90 percent of the world's music traditions are based on improvisation.

I'm always amazed when people make a big deal out of improvisation because you said it: every time you get on the freeway, you're improvising. I mean, it is the default way we manage things.

James Falzone: Those are really important points. And it's important to remember that if we think about the juxtaposition between classical and non-classical music, in Western classical music, improvisation was a part of training, the experience, and a part of making that music for centuries, right? It was a way in which musicians were always trained. It wasn't until the 19th century that musicians began to go through training and not have improvisation as part of their lives.

Wayne Horvitz: Yeah, and even that is cultural. I mean, my friends who learned, you know, who went to a conservatory in Moscow, for example, all learned to play cadenzas as part of their training.

Which is an improvisatory thing at the end of a piece, you know, if you're the flute player, the first violinist in a piece, there might be a cadenza, you know, we're all dealing with the same materials, you know, I mean, the real major distinctions between types of music are like, is the octave divided into 12 equal parts as it is in the music that we accept that in jazz and in classical music, but we don't accept that in jazz.

Korea or India, and those things are kind of radical differences in a way. That's what I think.

James Falzone: Let's do an open improvisation in which we are not looking at any composed or pre-thought material. And let's see how that changes how we interact and how it's experienced. As Wayne rightfully said, in many of the pieces we're playing, I'm the one who kind of brings us out of the improvisation.

You may have heard that in a couple of these tunes, I'm playing some kind of line that indicates to all of them, "Okay, let's move on." And I'm the one who's sort of cueing those things. In this case, everything is now equalized. Nobody is leading what we'll create now.

(music - "Everything Is Now Equalized")

LP: So, something that I'm curious about after witnessing that is sort of preparedness, and I don't necessarily mean years of education or technical capability, but how do you get into a place to be able to do that, and are there adjacent practices that support that in your life? Physical fitness, spiritual practice, math games, you know, it seems like you're entering a very specific place to be able to do that.

James Falzone: I'd love to turn part of this over to Ray here to answer that question. I'll just say that there's a misnomer somehow that improvising musicians are just winging it, right? You're just up here making it all up, and you don't have to practice anything, and it's, you know, it's so laid back, and yet musicians who are involved in improvisation in any way, shape or form, and also, for that matter, dancers and theater artists and so forth.

There is so much going into being prepared to be spontaneous for anybody improvising. Musicians, particularly improvisers I work with, spend so much time on their craft. You have to be ready for anything at the moment. That means a knowledge of theory, a great amount of execution on your instrument, the ability to play in an ensemble, and so forth.

So, Ray, if I turn this over to you, maybe you could talk a little bit about how you prepare to be a great improviser. I don't just mean in this particular context this afternoon, but just, you know, to be prepared to be an improviser.

Ray Larsen: I want to start by saying how fun and rare this conversation is. When we rehearse as a group or as individuals with other musicians, we often prepare the music in advance and never talk about it afterward. I never get to hear what people were thinking when they were improvising. We just say, "Hey, great gig, you sound good, let's hang." So, for instance, it was fun to hear James say that he wanted me to play the melody with him more during that piece a couple of times ago because I wasn't feeling that. I wanted to hear James play alone. (laughter)

But in terms of preparing, especially for a context like free improvisation, when I was hearing that question, I was thinking about what would take me out of the moment. And those are always the things I'm trying to, in my preparation, set myself up for not experiencing, right?

For me, one of the things that takes me out of musical moments is struggling technically with the instrument. So I spend a lot of my practice time doing a lot of trumpet fundamentals that are sort of preparing my chops, as we say in the biz, to feel dependable. That comes mostly from practicing regularly but also making sure that I'm aware of touching on all sorts of trumpet-specific flexibility exercises.

And then also being aware of how much I'm playing, whether it's too much or too little, what kind of concerts are coming up, and just being aware of what the calendar looks like so that I'm not overtaxing myself or under. And I think that feels very akin to what I think people go through when training for any physical feat. (It's been a long time since I've trained for any physical feat myself.)

So, physical training is an aspect of the instruments that I play. And I'm sure an aspect of all the instruments on stage. All that's to say, I want to make sure that I'm prepared for any concert so that I do not struggle with the technical side of things, which is a lifelong quest. Then, the other thing that often takes me out of feeling comfortable and like I can just execute what's in my head is if I'm doubting the listening of anyone else on stage or struggling with the decisions someone else is making.

That usually comes from aspects of group chemistry, such as people not listening. And I don't mean to blame other musicians I play with because that's not the intent here. Still, it's very helpful when you know that you can trust the people you're playing with to be present in their music-making and to be listening heavily to what's happening and making decisions based on what's happening in the group and not based on things like ego or predisposed, you know, what we call licks, or just like preconceived ideas of where they want the music to go.

And so that kind of preparation is a little harder to do. It happens with knowing who you will play with and especially experiencing playing with people. So, I'm lucky to have developed musical relationships with everyone on stage. And so I know going into this context that we can rely on each other in a musical setting to be focused, listen, and kind of pick up what each other's throwing down.

And that, again, is a lifelong quest. It's always something that I'm trying to get better at personally, being able to hear everything that's happening and being able to quell all the sort of ego things that rise up when I'm playing about whether I'm contributing well or sounding good or whether I'm listening enough at the moment.

A lot of head game things rise up, especially in a piece like that, where there's no form that we've decided in advance, and we're purely making things up as we go. For instance, that one started with Wayne playing solo, and then the question was, do I want to play, and when do I want to play? I loved hearing Wayne play alone for a while and then loving hearing Abbey join, and it felt like there was a moment where, yes, I should play something, but then that's, yeah, like it's very scary all of a sudden. It's like, what do I play to respond to that phrase that was so beautiful that also sets these two up to know where I'm going?

And in that free context, that kind of, those kind of form decisions are loaded. Whenever you decide that, everyone's recalibrating where the music's going. And what they want to be doing in their roles. So, that preparation comes with playing in this context quite a lot. Whether it's these people or any other improvisers being very used to understanding where someone might want to take the music, just based on the notes that they're playing and the attitude that they're using when they enter.

James Falzone: You may have noticed that Rocky made a fantastic subtle choice: he could have done anything in that open improvisation. And yet he chose a groove, and it was satisfying. And it set us all up to be able to now play with that groove. And we all chose to play with it or against it in a different way.

The power of one musician, especially when somebody, like the drum set, has a particular amount of power in a way, but each of us must consider the ensemble's totality and what will sound good and best at that moment. When somebody makes a choice, the others have a way to either play against that, play with that, or make use of that in some new and exciting ways.

And so that was an interesting choice of Rocky, which I liked and could play right along with.

LP: I wonder if you or one of the other band members could be really explicit for the audience and talk about things you've learned by studying and practicing improvisation that you've applied in your life.

How is this real for people in their day-to-day lives? How is it real for you when you leave the bandstand? How is it real when you talk to people about improvisation in their lives?

James Falzone: Abbey, would you like to take this complex question on? I'm going to give the hardest question, I think, to Abbey.

Abbey Blackwell: Okay, how do I apply improvisation daily?

James Falzone: I think part of that was also about what you learned by studying improvisation.

Abbey Blackwell: When I first started going to UW and met at least Ray around that time, I was exposed to free improvisation. I had been focusing on classical performance and more straight-ahead jazz, so this concept of not having any rules was horrifying. We have a social structure, social cues, and understanding.

And so it was a learning of another language or, like what Ray was saying, how to interact with other people, their assumptions, and their characters in improvisation situations. In that regard, I've definitely learned how to interact with folks, right? And what my role might be in a certain situation, musically or otherwise.

And especially when playing the bass, it's generally the lowest pitch you'll hear and can shift the mood. The feeling, the harmonic direction, Wayne's looking up like, "Hey, he's got some octaves too." No. Um, and, and rhythmically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's understanding the power of the instrument that you're playing.

And the same thing goes for everybody else on all these other instruments. You know what you have to offer and what you might expect from other people. Additionally, when Ray was talking, I was thinking that I've been doing more meditation in the last few years. And the thing that I've noticed in the last few years in free improvisation is noticing things that come up; you know, you're just noticing things, right?

You can't control these things, whether that's a thought or a sound, but they're there. Whether that's my noticing something I'm playing or going, "Oh my God, Oh my God, was that good enough? That totally clashed with what they're doing." You know, fill in the blank.

Similarly, kind of pointillistically focusing on different instruments in the band instead of those beautiful glimpses of really hearing everything at the same time. That's, I think, the hardest thing for me, and probably a lot of people, I don't know, is hearing the whole thing, right?

I am not just focusing on the melody or groove, not fixating on these things. And so I've learned to try and diversify my attention, both in everyday life and a musical performance. And that goes for written music as well. You know, it's like when you, when I play in an orchestra, it's not interesting or fun or musical to just listen to my part. Listening to the entire orchestra is incredibly interesting, fun, and musical.

LP: Thank you.

Wayne Horvitz: Can I just say one quick thing?

LP: Please.

Wayne Horvitz: There's a great moment in improvising when you don't know who's doing what, where you think somebody else is playing what you thought you were.

And that's something I think is a little bit unique to just improvised music. But I also think your question was pointed more toward the specific things people do to prepare. And I just want to make the point that everybody here spends a lot of time learning how chords, harmony, scales, and rhythms work.

It just doesn't matter. You can be playing in a blues band, you can be playing Bach, you can be playing improvised. I'm thinking, and just one last thing, a lot of things that happen in modern improvised music, as opposed to ancient improvised music, is that we're using more modern materials because we're influenced by modern music.

So the fact that I might play two chords that quote-unquote aren't related and find that aesthetically pleasing is just a product of me growing up in the 20th century and 21st century and having heard John Coltrane and having heard Stravinsky and having heard Bartok and have heard electronic music.

There's triads, there's seventh chords, there's, you know, it's just the same. And I think it's very funny because Abbey and I come from completely different places. You were scared to improvise. I was scared to have a piece of music put in front of me. And we're both dealing with the same materials.

James Falzone: Beautifully said. A big part of this is figuring out vocabulary, learning vocabulary, and learning grammar to speak that vocabulary, right? You understand what your materials are, what you can do with these instruments, and what you can do with your knowledge of harmony, rhythms, scales, etc.

And you are then figuring out how to use and speak it. And that is a beautiful connection to that sense of your question about what you have learned about life, right? That's how you interact with people and go back to your recipes, stew, and so forth, right? Like your cooking metaphor, it's how you get through life by making sense of the materials in front of you.

Let's play another one. This is called "Room 307." It's a quick little swinger.

(music - "Room 307")

LP: Something that strikes me about that piece is the transitions between the soloists and the handoffs and who decides when they will come in. Wayne held back for a measure or two before starting, and sometimes, one instrumentalist roared right in after another. I love that element of watching this music and hearing it performed live.

James, when is an ensemble too big to pull off something like this? Have you seen the upper limit? Is there a generally accepted upper limit? I know it might be different. Wayne talked about some ancient music; I could think of drummers and some northern African music where it's a village of people.

But I wonder how it is in the traditions you're accustomed to working in.

James Falzone: Well, yeah, that's another great question. And, uh, I should mention that when this gets out on the podcast, we're hearing the sounds of a club coming to life, right? The Royal Room here in Seattle is getting ready for the evening, and you're hearing dishes, ice, and ice makers.

So I'm cognizant that this will eventually wind up just being audio. So, this improvised music has no limits in terms of size. There was a wonderful group in Chicago for many years called the Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, with ten musicians improvising together.

And it made this wall of sound, and sometimes you couldn't figure out, as Wayne said earlier, who was doing what and what was happening, but it made for incredibly exciting listening.

I also know there's a great improvising duo of John Carter and a wonderful trumpet player named Bobby Bradford. It was just a duo, trumpet, and clarinet that I thought was fantastic. I also love hearing solo improvisers. And then, as you alluded to, sometimes you can listen to a very large ensemble playing in different kinds of world music contexts, in different global music contexts. I think there are no limits.

As for me, I love hearing an ensemble of three or six musicians. I just find that, in terms of hearing improvisation, I feel like I can hear everything. I can hear little groupings develop. I can hear people interacting. I can hear the thinking going on in a small ensemble like that.

This is why I often choose to work in groups between sort of that size, trios into groups with six. Wayne conducts a wonderful ensemble just about every night here at the Royal Room that Wayne is the leader of. And Ray and I get to play in that ensemble. It's a big band, like a more traditional big band.

It's called the Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble. Although we play a lot of compositions, Wayne also conducts a wonderful amount of improvisation. So that's a very large ensemble, that although we're not all improvising at the same time, we're all thinking about improvisation, improvising with the material, allowing space for soloists, and so forth.

So, I think there's really, it's limitless. If this music interests you, I would encourage you to seek out recordings and live performances of a range of different kinds of improvisation so that you can hear how those groupings develop.

A wonderful and classic recording to listen to would be John Coltrane's Ascension record, which has got to be 10 to 11 players. I can't quite remember, but it's probably something like that if anybody remembers. But that's where you're hearing some greats playing all at once. And it's sometimes hard to figure out who's doing what, but it makes for incredibly creative and exciting listening.

LP: Well, the best thing we can do for the audience, and ultimately the podcast listeners, is to have the last sound they hear be the band and not my voice.

So, before I turn it over to you all one final time, I just want to thank everybody for being here. Thank you so much for coming out this afternoon.

James Falzone: Truly. Yeah, and I want to thank you, Lawrence, for having the vision for this and the podcast. If you don't know the Spotlight On podcast, it's some fascinating conversations.

I was privileged to be a guest a few weeks ago, but you're a wonderful interviewer and thinker about music, and I know you do this with a labor of love. And so I am grateful to you and thank you, and to all of you for showing up on a beautiful Saturday afternoon when you can't even get a drink or anything, but stick around and get a drink, of course.

And of course, support the Royal Room, thanks to Ben and Simon, to Wayne who's hosting us here at the Royal Room, and to these fabulous musicians, Ray, Rocky, Abbey, Wayne, uh, give it up one more time for them,

LP: … and James Falzone.

James Falzone: Thank you. We're gonna play a last composition of mine that takes you into a different realm of improvised music.

I feel like this is a tune that has a very particular melody; it has chord changes, and it has form. And so when we're improvising on it, we follow specific chord progressions and form. We have to land in a certain place at a certain time, and so forth. This gives you another sense of how improvisers can organize the time.

This kind of falls into a bit more of the traditional way you might hear a jazz tune. And this is an older composition of mine. It comes from 2005, which feels like, you know, lifetimes ago. It's called "A Dream In Which Appeared Mark Chagall."

(music - "A Dream In Which Appeared Mark Chagall")

James Falzone: Perfect, and the improvised sounds of the bar coming to life, yeah. Thank you all so much. Wayne, Abbey, Rocky, Ray, Lawrence,

LP: … and James!

James Falzone: Enjoy your afternoon.

LP: Thank you.