The Improviser and the Improvised

Daniel Barbiero and Al Margolis

Corbett describes this existential dimension of free improvisation when he suggests that the best improvisers develop an intensely personal vocabulary--the “lexicon” alluded to earlier--of the sounds and gestures they find most meaningful. More than technique is involved, although that certainly is part of it; sensibility, and, as he terms it, “an amplification or intensification of personal identity” are also involved. In other words, something beyond music narrowly construed comes into play--something indicative of a more fundamental aspect of the improviser's comportment in the world. When most effectively played, free improvisation tells us something about the improviser that goes beyond the strictly musical. (Daniel Barbiero, "Free Improvisation, Beyond Mystery and Mystique: John Corbett's A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation," Perfect Sound Forever Oct./Nov. 2016)