Soft Improv

(Side question: How come "free" music tends to be atonal and noisy? Just because our ears are not used to it? I like atonal and noisy sometimes, just curious.)

my first answer is "freefall" by jimmy giuffre but i haven't heard it in years so i forget just how "soft" it is.

taku sugimotos solo guitar improv: impossibly spare, gesture based, heartbreakingly fragile.

In a Silent Way - Miles Davis

mark a possible (meaning not complete and debatable) answer to your second question might be leftover recieved wisdom about a. post- trane/ayler "fire music"...ecstatic overblowing as communion with the beyond, speaking in tongues, spirit-of-68 black nationalist rhetoric or b. brotzmann-esque hard drinking, hard living manly euro-bluster on the other.

also: jazz, like hiphop, is a medium rooted in the desire to "outdo your opponent" (the sickest flow, the most boggling/bar-stomping solo), therefore it is not generally pre-disposed towards the quiet, the introverted, the reserved?

extreme chromaticism of a c. taylor variety coupled with "swing" demands a certain force of motion? (blood boiling, air vibrating, etc.)?

d. bailey style perversity, throwing a noisy spanner into the otherwise quiet works.

evan parker: "what happens when you work with the longest parts [of a song/melody]? perhaps you're no longer improvising. perhaps you're merely remembering."

Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi band, especially when on Warner Brothers, probably works. Also, of things I've heard in the past year, some stuff by Dave Douglas's "Charms of the Night Sky" group (so, Charms of the Night Sky, A Thousand Evenings, and maybe others), and Guy Klucevsek leading his own group.

Don't know about lyrical but Efzeg's Grain is frequently very soft, quiet, spare, and subtle. It's also really great. As were Sunny Murray, Sabir Mateem, and Alan Silva tonight.

eric dolphy's "out to lunch" has its moments of gentleness and lyricism (bowed bass/bass clarinet duet!), and while dolphy can get kinda atonal it's not always screechy or grating but bouncy and happily deranged ... ?????~!

free jazz lends itself to freakouts, freakouts tend not to be mellow.

AMM have their quiet moments - and I second the Giuffre reccomendation - even better, if you can still find it, is the '1961' dbl put out by ECM, which brings together two utterly gorgeous Giuffre/Bley/Swallow recs, 'Fusion' and 'Thesis'. The lack of drums might be a factor.

There's a CD called "wire Music" by Alastair galbraith , where him and this guy played long wires in the dark with rosin all over their hands. it's spooky and mellow.

Sachiko M
Toshimaru Nakamura

Improv via sampler and/or no-input mixing board. Very quiet -- sort of the Mille Plateaux of free improv.

I like this question, since I think I tend to like to softer side of free jazz. Free Smooth.

I have not heard her, but supposedly Marilyn Crispell's new work has taken a lyrical turn. I'm very interested in hearing her latest work.

I just ordered a Hans Reichel CD that I think fits the bill, though I'm not 100% sure it's improv. If I like it, I will probably come back and have something to say about it.

Some Sun Ra, I think, too, but it tends to be interspersed with everything else he did.

Morphogenisis= Stromatolites. That's quiet but there's plenty of detail.

Alice Coltrane? Not exactly free, but definitely gorgeous and lyrical.

Assuming you meant free jazz (rather than just jazz):

To some listeners, Bill Dixon's albums pretty much epitomize the description above. Live in Italy Vol. 1 would be my suggestion.

On a totally different note, there are bands like Oregon and the early Paul Winter Consort, whose collective improvisations have a lot of the tonal qualities and dynamics of chamber music. The Winter Consort live album Road, on which there are a couple of improvised or partially improvised tracks (esp. "Come to Your Senses"), has been one of my favorites for many years.

Lots of individual tracks come to mind, like "Essential Soul" off the David Murray/Milford Graves album Real Deal. Also Weather Report's first album, a lot of which is to some extent collectively improvised, has plenty of lyrical moments, especially on the B-side. And people like Bill Frisell and Dave Holland often move in and out of free/improvisational territory.

fred frith's "clearing" has many beautiful, soft moments

QUOTE:

I have not heard her, but supposedly Marilyn Crispell's new work has taken a lyrical turn. I'm very interested in hearing her latest work. __________________________

Yes, you are correct.

One of latest albums 'Amaryllis' on the ECM label, I think you'd really enjoy. It's with her excellent trio, of Gary Peacock and Paul Motian.

Very lyrical, and the music has more in common with the Bill Evans trio than the Cecil Taylor trio. Very melodic and 'soft'.

Another that comes to mind is Satoko Fujii, a Japanese free jazz pianist, Check out her song 'Moonlight Sola' a duet with the great bassist Mark Dresser.

John Zorn's 'The Gift' is pretty 'soft' and at times almost 'easy listening' so you might be interested in that.

There is Keith Jarrett's solo 'concert' albums, but I'm sure you already know about them.

Anthony Braxton's 'Standards' works can be quite lyrical at times as well.

Are you talking jazz, noise, or all the above? Birchville Cat Motel - I saw them in a temple in Osaka - actually they played with three other 'noise' acts, and the gentleness and quietness of all their sets seemed dictated by the space an awful lot. i chatted with one bloke afterwards and he said so. i don't know if it adds anything to the discussion, but what the hey.

I'm wondering primarly about free jazz, with horns and drums and whatnot. Not suprised that some improv from Japan falls into this area.

I highly recommend Grachan Moncur III. Unsure what's still in print. 'The Intellect' on "The New Wave in Jazz" Impulse collection is one of my favorite songs and features trombone, vibes, bass, and drums in a majestic, rolling, free composition. It is a great testament to the abilities of the human mind. "Some Other Stuff" is v original and has Herbie Hancock playing some amazing shit. discogrqaphy: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/hardbop/Moncur.htm

yeah! i thought no-one else liked him! ehy anyone who likes dolphy's 'out to lunch' (i.e. everybody, right?) shd check out jackie mclean's 'destination : out' w/ moncur, it's great.

kind of straying from the subj of this qn tho

oh not that far tho i guess

look for projects involving Burkhard Stangl, a much gutsier guitarist than Taku Sugimoto, yet still extremely lyrical - midway between a kinder, gentler Derek Bailey and a more abstract Loren Connors. steer clear of his opera-in-progress, 'Venusmond,' or his numerous "jazz" combos on Extraplatte; head straight for the solo 'Récital' (Durian) or the fantastic 'Schnee' (duo with Christof Kurzmann, on Erstwhile).

i don't think you'll find improv softer than either of the two Phil Durrant/Thomas Lehn/Radu Malfatti CDs - 'beinhaltung' on Fringes; 'dach' on Erstwhile. these three players are monsters of intense quietude. on 'dach' there's not a moment of actual silence, yet the performance is all but overpowered by the steady drizzle of rain on a plastic roof; your breathing is enough to drown out 'beinhaltung'
'May 15' CD by Giuseppe Ielasi, Domenico Scjiano and Gino Robair - also on Fringes, also barely there - is another competitor for the crown of quiet. so is 'The Contest of Pleasures' (Phil Durrant/Xavier Charles/Axel Dörner) - on Potlatch.

if you want yr improv a little more audioactive but still soft, try the first two CDs by poire_z (s/t on For 4 Ears; 'presque_clic' on Sonoris). this is Günter Müller, Voice Crack and eriK m, who pack their music with low-key detail. really beautiful stuff, HIGHLY recommended. the newer '+', which features separate collaborations between poire_z and Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, and Christian Marclay, is also great but gets quite a bit noisier.

also search anything by these projects (or the principals involved):

nmperign (Bhob Rainey, Greg Kelley; also Tatsuya Nakatani, et al)
lethe (Yukinori Kikuchi and Kiyoharu Kuwayama)
minamo
perlonex (Burkhard Beins, Joerg Maria Zeger, Ignatz Schick)

James Coleman "Zuihitsu' - therémin improv, feat. many support players from the Boston (nmperign) scene - a MUST! an exquisite album.

more organic - still soft: Steve Roden, Brandon Labelle (esp. as Roden/Labelle - seek out their meme and Digital Narcis discs), the Jewelled Antler collective (Thuja, et al).

god, anything on the meme label. try to find the first (untitled) compilation CD for pointers to the key quiet-improv players. and the Hacca-Note (again untiled) compilation CD - great x-section of JP/US quiet-improv and sound-art work.

could go on and on...