Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation by Ben Watson

Author:Ben Watson [Watson, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78168-240-1
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2013-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

Bailey’s playing shows that, rather than the punishing negation feared by conservatives, atonality is the open door to real communication: the cosy fug of individual memory is dispersed, and one sniffs the chill air of collective action, risky and uncharted.

COMPANY WEEK 1977

Bailey’s annual Company Weeks were a way of making Free Improvisation public and visible. They were intensely involving events, allowing audiences to follow processes that are usually kept out of sight. Bailey has described them as ‘emotional, musically intoxicating experiences; pretty much my ideal way of working’ [Improvisation, 1992, p. 136]. The first Company Week was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) between 24 and 29 May 1977. In retrospect, after Company began including dancers, moonlighting classical players, rock guitarists and turntablists, the 1977 line-up looks distinctly jazz. At the time, though, it was an international summit meeting of free players from three countries. The four British hosts were Derek Bailey (guitar), Steve Beresford (piano, guitar, ‘etc.’), Lol Coxhill (soprano sax) and Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxes). America supplied Steve Lacy (soprano), plus two musicians from Chicago’s AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians): Leo Smith (trumpet and flute) and Anthony Braxton (reeds and flute). The Dutch scene supplied Maarten van Regteren Altena (bass) and Han Bennink (percussion), along with the American Tristan Honsinger (cello). Bailey thought enough of the music to release three LPs [Incus 28–30] and – in 1994 – a facsimile of a ‘dummy book’ written up from notes made in situ by the poet Peter Riley, and given to Bailey because Riley hadn’t managed to repay his complimentary tickets by getting anything into print: Company Week [London: Compatible Recording and Publishing, 1994].

Peter Riley’s account insists on the ineffable unknowability of the musical in-itself. This allows him to focus on many poignant details – the holes in Steve Beresford’s socks glimpsed through his sandals, or the ducks in St James’s Park which Riley passed on his way to the concerts – but tends to postpone critical judgement. Working with guitarist John Russell, another devoted member of the audience, Riley came up with a somewhat disappointing description of what Braxton and Parker played on the Wednesday night: ‘jolly interesting’ (Riley’s psychogeographic descriptions of the City, on the other hand, show that the ‘London’ commonly ascribed to Iain Sinclair is just one example of a modernist vision vouchsafed to Olsonites and Prynnians). About the music, Riley wrote: ‘What we “think of it” is our problem. What I “thought of it at the time” is as faultlessly irrelevant as my complete non-recollection of it now. From Thursday on we were all more-or-less besides the point.’ Riley’s aphasia allied Black Mountain poetics to Bailey’s fear that any consideration of music outside the act of playing will end up as promotional duplicity or composerly diktat. Decipher the handwritten text, however, ignore the Zen/Heidegger/Wittgenstein metaphysics, and Riley’s Company Week is fascinating: a snapshot of the quandaries raised by a week of Free Improvisation.

Company Weeks are love affairs, brief and intense episodes that affect relations between musicians and audiences for life.

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