Improvisation as Composition
Improvising in PNO DUO often has difficult moments for me. Usually, they arise when I am involved in my own ideas and not listening to what else is happening. The pressure to be creative in the moment, and not let the other musician(s) down, and concerns about what the listener hears all have an impact on my ability to listen. As a result, I don’t react well to what is happening and create musical ideas that may not be best suited to the situation.
On the other hand, listening to the episodes outside of the performance makes it easy to pay attention to everything that is happening and think of alternative ways I (or the other participants) could have contributed; it also allows me breathing room to think of long-term development of those ideas.
Today, I saw the Gryphon Trio perform Robert Rival’s Piano Trio, and at various points in the work, I could hear how the players parts reacted to each other, especially in the first movement: the main theme is tossed between performers (sometimes one instrumentalist states it before another is finished), played in an expanded form on one instrument and contracted on another (sometimes simultaneously I think), and goes through many manipulations throughout the piece.
After witnessing this, I began to wonder what it would happen if improvisation was executed as effortlessly as the Gryphon Trio performed Robert’s piece. If we [PNO DUO] could improvise in a way that created something similar to a developed work, it would sound extremely coherent and organic. This would require that all the participants listen intensely so that we can be prepared to react to each other, but more importantly, it would force us to think as composers. This leads me to the conclusion that when one is able to think as a composer, but in the moment or performance, improvisation can produce some seriously awe-inspiring art.
A while ago, I read about David Braid’s approach to improvisation as a composer and never really thought of it as something I could explore, being a (very) young composer; the Gryphon Trio’s performance has made the strong connection between composing and improvising very clear to me: by focusing on either one, you grow your skills in the other. I am very excited to give this a go in my future improvising.
