Performance, Transcendence and Consciousness: Comparing improvisation to academic research on improvisation
*** This is from a scholarly paper written during coursework for MUS6090 - Psychology of Performance, taken as part of a M.A. degree in Music Psychology, Education and Wellbeing at the University of Sheffield, UK. In it, I was asked to analyze my experience leading my own band while performing my own compositions for improvised music, versus performing as a sideman in a quintet, and compare the experience to academic definitions of jazz. Of course, the word count limit and style does not account for the actual lived experience or - anxiety and adrenaline! ***
Studies of transcendence within solo and group improvisation have become increasingly fueled by the fields of music perception and cognition. However, the ecological and transcendental experiences of many working musicians today are not often written about or published, denying research on how performers may be affected by improvisational performance somatically, psychologically or socially. A 2008 study by Charles Limb and Allen Braun scanned jazz pianists improvising under an fMRI scanner, finding that within the magical moments of improvisation, a 1) deactivation of the prefrontal cortex - that is, the brain center responsible for inhibitions, and 2) a focal activation of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex - the brain center responsible for autobiographical narrative - occur within the brain.
Comparing academic research in psychology, neuroscience, and improvisation, I examine two sets of improvised music I performed on piano at Egan’s Ballard Jam House in Seattle, Washington. The first set featured my original compositions in piano trio format with bassist Evan Flory-Barnes and drummer Matt Jorgensen. The second set I joined jazz quintet Matt Jorgensen +451, in which the drummer led original post-modern integral jazz compositions (Jorgensen 2002, 2009), performed by same trio, with trumpeter Thomas Marriott and saxophonist Pete Gallio. I examine and analyze these performances through an often academically cited five part model of the definition of jazz coined by Keith Sawyer (1992). I chose to analyze this performance for its multi-modalities of sideperson/bandleader, composer/non-composer, group with previous vs. non previous performance experience, and quintet/trio - to investigate with respect to academic research on improvisation, consciousness, social influences upon embodiment in performance of the various domains of compositions, noting an urgency for ecological factors in jazz to be understood and conversed about within the ecosystem of jazz. In general, my findings note a dearth of research on psychological processes of improvisers regarding these multi-modalities with respect to situatedness and social ecology, and a need for further research.
The Gig
Egan’s is a small, old-school jazz venue in the heart of the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, complete with a grand piano, New Orlean’s centric kitchen, and appropriately quirky music loving owner. I arrived the day of show at 4pm for soundcheck. As I walked in, I recalled my previous night I played Egan’s, on a double bill with Seattle legend Overton Berry, whose calm spirit filled the room that day at the 2019 Ballard Jazz Festival. As the owner and I talked about local history, we discussed the setup of the stage and the piano on a late summer day.
Without a soundcheck or warm-up, as often happens in jazz traditions, my piano trio began the first set on the 7pm downbeat, amidst a full house. A red digital clock stared at me from the wall, a constant reminder. We began with “Starlight,” a swinging crowd-pleaser, and worked our way through repertoire that we had previously played together as a band over years. As Matt, Evan and I relaxed into the set, the synergy of having toured the Pacific Northwest together one month prior came to the fore. Since they knew the tunes, I could play my ‘self’. The most difficult challenge about this set of music was the length, the endurance required, the shifting between complex notated music and improvisation while maintaining a flow. Keeping the forms and arrangements as discussed, despite feeling spontaneous desires to cue alternatives during improvisation, was daunting. We had some great improvisational moments and interactions over solo sections, some standard ones, and a few terse moments. Luckily, we executed all compositions as discussed, avoiding all train wrecks, and dominated each improvisational section with confident group play. I was sweating with adrenaline throughout the entire set, in which we played twelve tunes or so from 7 - 9pm.
During the break, I met Thomas Marriott and Pete Gallio for the first time, respected jazz horn players both. Flitting about between sets, I got the next set of music together, and the two horn players joined our trio onstage. Matt Jorgensen, the drummer and now bandleader, fiercely kicked off “Ridgecrest” from behind the kit, a fast bebop head at an intimidating tempo. Thomas took the first solo, raising his trumpet high, setting up a high caliber of bebop communication for the whole band. In preparation for the gig, I had listened to recordings and practiced the tunes at home, but I was nervous about making an impression on my first solo, so I kept comping and grooving behind, careful to lock in. Pete Gallio jumped in on saxophone quickly for the next solo, and I consciously breathed and relaxed further gripping the changes, quietly relieved to not have to jump in yet. Suddenly, as I comped, I felt a different energy take over — a feeling of embodying the spirit of all pianists in quintets that came before me. I stopped thinking about each member of the group as a part but of the group as a whole. (Edward Sarath notes this phenomenon in his faintly Jungian 2013 cognitive model of improvisation in the book Improvisation, Creativity and Consciousness.) As we played through the tunes August, Quiet Silence, and Tattooed by Passion, rather than judging my ‘self’ as unilateral against the world, I dialed into my improvisations as a part of the whole. While I had not played in a quintet setting for a long time, I was surprised by my instincts, comforted by the immediate re-insertion of myself into this fabric. We played each tune wordlessly, reading and deciding in the moment to whom the solo would go next. Sometimes we would motion to another, and as usual I often glanced at Evan to check out his state of being, and what and how he was doing it within short term temporal consciousness. Each tune wrapped up unanimously by taking the melody out, and we finished to a pleased crowd late into the night. After, in an adrenaline fueled heightened state, I spoke with friends and family, settled up with the band and owner, packed my stuff, and left wondering if I forgot anything as usual (I did - my rings - which I left at the piano, and had to go back and get the next day). It is a good time to point out the kinesthetic and proprioceptive elements that go into playing a show, and the mind and body consciousness shifts that changes a performer on a nightly basis, that inevitably wire their consciousness and autobiographical narrative, fortifying their identity in music.
Matt Jorgensen +451 live at Egan’s, August 9th, 2019. Left to right: Matt Jorgensen, Evan Flory-Barnes, Thomas Marriott, Pete Gallio, Brittany Anjou. Photo credit Gregory Dear.
A Brief Review of Academic Research on Improvisation
John Sloboda (1985, 1988) and Jeff Pressing (1988) are major pioneers in researching music improvisation. In the 1980s, research of jazz improvisation mainly began as computational model theories that examined recordings of solo improvisers, yielding what Pressing called “units of ideation” (notes, being the smallest unit), and “referent” forms (such as a blues chorus or jazz standard used by musicians to improvise over). Since the 2000’s, research in improvisation has gained an understanding of jazz as a cultural and social phenomenon, with regards to situatedness, cognition, consciousness, identity, environmental influence, and various forms of jazz from traditional bebop to free improvisation. More recently, jazz has been more understood in terms of constructivist identity, and ecological situatedness for the improviser (Iyer, 2000, 2008,2019; MacDonald, 2005, 2006).
What defines jazz?
A study interviewing jazz improvisers by Keith Sawyer (1992) identified five elements specific to creative jazz improvisation, separate from the classical music idiom. Sawyer defined these as:
1) interactional influences (such as other musicians, group influence, audience, musical conversations onstage)
2) conscious and nonconscious processes
3) units of ideation (musical notes or phrases within an improvisation) - also coined by Pressing
4) the balance of structure and innovation in the domain (types of jazz lexicon; i.e. bebop, post-bop, modal, free), and lastly
5) the balance of structure and innovation of the individual, noting the internal tension of a player to constantly innovate new ideas while perfecting their technique and phrasing of such
Some have likened the act of musical improvisation to the act of verbal dialogue, and some to talking a walk with others (Hagburg, 2017). Keith Sawyer had acknowledged the paucity of research about improvisation, and his work identified the need to study jazz within a social context by the early 1990s. (More recently and more importantly, scholar and pianist Vijay Iyer has called out institutionalized and systemic racism within academia, university music programs, and the music industry for its reluctance to regard improvisation as equally if not greater than classical music.) These five elements lean into understanding the improvising individual and group, so I have chosen to use these five elements as a model to analyze my performances.
Transcendence Studies, Psychology and Improvisation
Music Psychology is a research field with roots in music perception and cognition, lending practical applications to clinical music therapy, that began the 1950s. Studies of transcendence within improvisation have been informed by developments in psychology and improvisation research. The notion of ‘flow state’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975), and recently used by scholars in the context of improvisation, interchangeably with terms such as, ‘attunement’ (Kossack, 2008), ‘chasing the magic moment’ (Jeddeloh, 2003), ‘embodiment’ (Iyer, 2000, 2002, 2004), and ‘entrainment,' referring to dyad pairs in rhythm and drumming (Doffman, 2009). Important to the aspect of environment in which an improviser is performing, which undoubtedly influences their interactions, is Vijay Iyer’s notion of ‘situated cognition’ (2002). Improvisation has shown its abilities to allow for altered states of consciousness, allowing physiological and psychological healing, as evidenced by its uses in music therapy (Tomaino, 2013). Within a jazz performance setting, there is no doubt altered consciousness is influenced by the surroundings of the performer (Sawyer, 1992). A neuroscientific study of fMRI scans of jazz pianists (Limb & Braun, 2008) showed a deactivation of the prefrontal cortices (removing inhibition), and a focal activation in the MPFC, responsible for autobiographical narrative in the brain. Literally, improvisation allows us to enter an altered state of consciousness, deinhibit us, activate or access sensorimotor pathways in the nervous system (e.g. improvisational music therapy can help injured patients regain motor skills that regular physical therapy cannot help), heal trauma, relieve anxiety, perhaps because it allows us to rewrite our own autobiographical story to ourselves. It does this by helping us escape temporality into a moment to moment responsibility of action and reaction to ourselves, our environment, and others. (It is worth mentioning that music can assist Parkinson’s patients to regain motor skills), assist with memory in Alzheimer’s patients, and relieve anxiety, amongst many other benefits.)
If we continue into Sawyer’s second defining element of jazz improvisation, conscious and nonconscious processes, we encounter various models of similarity. Kenny and Gellrich (Parncutt & McPherson, 2002, Chapter 8) proposed a model where the improviser’s short, medium and long term ‘anticipation’ and ‘recall’ from the present moment where subject to the performer’s conscious, moment to moment. With a Jungian perspective (Einzelganger, 2019), Edward Sarath (2013) proposed the ‘self/Self’ model of creative consciousness, an idealization of the improviser’s journey based on ‘self’ as the personal (egoic) self, in an everyday state of the mundane, and the transcendent ‘Self’, one who is in a higher realm of consciousness of the self, others, the environment and world. Idealizing micro and macro structures of transcendence within meditation practices of an individual, Sarath terms enlightenment, self-integration, and primarily individuation (p.223), of which John Coltrane remains the prime example in jazz history. However, while individuation is aspired to by many jazz musicians, such as Michael Eaton (2014), Neither Kenny and Gellrich’s nor Sarath’s idealistic models recognize practical issues of improvisation, such as labor of ‘units of ideation’ (Sawyer, 1992), or improvisational misalignment - what we might call ‘bad jazz’ within solo or group performance, where Sawyer has noted the concept of deindividuation in group jazz play.
Michael Kossak (2008) defined the word attunement within group free improvisation to describe the therapeutic phenomena of individuals combining rhythms and musical sounds in sync with each other, and the word mis-attunement to describe musical moments that divided individuals creatively and caused irritation amongst players. Kossak characterized mis-attunement as an individual’s “ego” creating a rift within an improvising group. Similarly to deindividuation, Garry Hagberg (2017) captured the ambiguity within the group mind of jazz, where a collective might carry an aesthetic ideology that is “starkly discontinuous with the mentality of their members” where the group’s “decisions may, but need not, correspond to the preferred individual decisions of any single member of the group” (p.310). Bastien and Hostager (1988) studied an ensemble that had not previously improvised together, and despite the uncertainty of predicting each other’s actions, they noted the greater the ‘center of shared information’ between players yielded a higher level of complexity in the music (Dean & Bailes, 2016). While this may be intrinsically true of groups, it doesn’t speak to each individual’s experience of that group.
This brings us to Sawyer’s third element - units of ideation – that is, the musical notes, phrases and ideas generated in a particular improvisation, and therefore the mastery of which can be considered fluency in Sawyer’s fourth element of domain – a player’s knowledge of lexicons in jazz, and the ability to balance structure and rule breaking within. To summarize studies on domain in jazz, Jeff Pressing first proposed a model of improvisation, from which jazz scholars took his terming of ‘referent form’ (Pressing, 1988, as cited in Dean & Bailes, 2016), meaning structural forms of improvisation such as a blues chorus, or a 32-bar standard. As per bebop, swing and latin traditions, jazz musicians common improvise over these structures, particularly before the onset of free jazz pioneers such as Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. As Barnett (2010) put it, a referent is “jazz improvisation that takes place over chord changes”, from which the alternative is free jazz, improvisation without harmonic or rhythmic constraints.
Sawyer’s fifth element of jazz improvisation connotes the individual’s ability to balance structure and innovation as a tension filled existence. As a professional improvisation trained musician I identify personally with this tension, as the demands of the jazz lexicon, a practice that requires a lot of discipline, to satisfy proficiency in the varieties of styles, endless challenging repertoire, and complex harmony, lead to a lot of pressure while improvising in a social context, being critically perceived in terms of one’s proficiency in the lexicon, as well as ability to ‘innovate’ - an expectation of breaking the rules.
A Brief Analysis of Playing Trio and Quintet through Sawyer’s Five Element Model of Improvisation
Element One: Interactional Influence
In liu of the first element of interactional influence, Sawyer notes of jazz culture that “jazz performers regard only jazz performed in a club atmosphere, with a live audience, as true jazz” (p.256), of which our examples of performances at Egan’s apply. Interactions with the club owner, the audience, and each other, influenced the performers to deliver high levels of energy. Being situated onstage with respected elders in the field, in front of a full house containing a jazz journalist in the audience, only pushed me further to embody the performance to the fullest. Musically, the trio set was enriched by the collective experiences of Matt, Evan and I having played trio over years, and recently touring said selected tunes on three consecutive nights two months prior, emulated by performing twelve tunes without rehearsal. The micro experiences of our interactions onstage clearly influenced each player, and the group as a whole in both the trio and the quintet. Despite quintet players who hadn’t all met, spoken, or played together before, the introduction by the leader allowed all members to have a framework of trust, also influenced by prior interactions. These ecological and social interactions certainly influenced the music, starting from the group personnel to the phenomena of microcosmic notes exchanged. Without the ecology of our community, this performance wouldn’t have happened. I’d like to note I was extremely grateful to be asked to play this bill with the +451 and to join the quintet, for the sheer experience and joy.
Element Two: Consciousness / Nonconsciousness
I definitely experienced an extremely heightened sense of awareness while improvising, if not extreme overstimulation beginning with rising adrenaline levels in the hour prior to the show, the ‘high’ of which lasted until the next day. (This is pretty typical for me. In summer of 2018 I played my ass off on a sextet gig on vibraphone lead by my friend, saxophonist Johnny Butler, at the Seamonster Lounge, in which I nearly passed out for three days after from the energy burst - the longest to date, until leading a Middle East February 2020 trio tour with drummer Nick Anderson and bassist Greg Chudzik, which I couldn’t get out of bed for a week after I was so tired. But that’s another post.)
I felt an individual transcendence as well as a collective group transcendence within each set. Both groups certainly transcended from ‘parts-to-whole’ or rather, from each individual’s egoic self, to their transcendent Self, to group awareness (Sarath, 2013), a transcendental consciousness fortified further collectively together on each tune. When the horn players joined the stage, the leader role shifted to the drummer, with new tunes, it reset the atmosphere of the room and the band. Neither in the trio nor quintet sets did anyone play into mis-attunement - pulling ‘fancy tricks’ that excluded an individual, and no one had a swagger of ego that could have thrown off the collective goal. There was a sense of deindividuation in some tunes where I wanted certain things to happen, or was anxious for certain things to happen triggering reactions I anticipated to have musically but didn’t do, and in passing moments feeling other players moving in a different vibe while I was still on one vibe.
Element Three: Units of Ideation
Notes were considered to be the smallest unit of ideation in improvised solos by Jeff Pressing (1988), and larger phrases and overarching structures were identified by Sawyer (1992). The ideations I currently recall (six months after the gig) of each professional musician, particularly in free forms, solos and comping repertoires, were generated in notes, phrases, bowing (bass), calls and responses, mimicking, and referencing other soloists and conversation within group play that stemmed from ideations large and small. I would definitely be better able to recall units of ideation if I were asked to do so before a gig, I would be able to recall ideations right after each improv or tune of a gig, and able to reflect on my in the moment experience of it while watching a recording. This has more to do with the experience of temporality and phenomenology of improvisation.
Element Four: Domain
The domain of the trio at Egan’s referenced compositions inspired by the early 1960s trios of Ahmad Jamal and Red Garland, and the free jazz of Cecil Taylor and John Zorn (Barnett, 2010). Nine tunes comprise Enamigo Reciprokataj, (Anjou, 2019) an album I wrote inspired by 20th century composers Ahmad Jamal, McCoy Tyner, Red Garland, Oscar Peterson, Igor Stravinsky and Bill Evans. Five tunes belong to varied swing categories, ranging from ballad (Harfa), early 1960’s swing / latin (Starlight), late 1960’s hard bop (Hard Boiled Soup), a 5/4 meter swing with momentary free improv noise (Olive You), and one waltz with a segway in 5/4 (Snuffaluffagas). Two tunes fell under straight eighth groove categories: an atonal avant-rock tune in 4/4 and 5/8 (Balliou for Bartok), and a triplet march with stop-time traversing into reggaeton (Cyrene). The suite contains one free improvisational model (Girls Who Play Violin) in the key of E minor and Db major. We additionally played my arrangement of the Russian Dance movement from Stravinsky’s Petrouchka Ballet, a cover of ‘Isobel’ by Bjork, and ‘Horse,’ an atonal avant-rock math piece by Tim Byrnes (2005), to which I sung a comedic libretto about gender equality while playing.
Without trying to compare (because comparison is violence as the great Taylor Mac says - and simplification often risks mis-attunement within jazz ecological social systems) the sound of Matt Jorgensen +451 - that evening with this personnel - stemmed from the referent tradition forms of late 1960s and 1970s quintets led by Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter, and the fact that all musicians were subconsciously aware of this original ideation of the ensemble as a reference point, without any discussion. Because of this, the quintet had a greater instantaneous “shared body of experience”, because of its standard in jazz, and greater number of players.
Contrastingly, the trio set contained original compositions with less-traditional arrangements, free jazz sections with abstract notation specifications likely to keep a player’s eye on the page, lengthy referent arrangements ranging from 3-5 pages, which took time to communicate and learn to weave together in rehearsal. A study by Murnighan and Conlon (1991) found that successful string quartets tended to have less rehearsal discussion than unsuccessful counterparts. This could provide a comparative framework for understanding the performance experience of these two different domains, in a separate reflective paper.
In real time, for me, after playing original trio music, re-accessing the quintet lexicon was a nice break from band-leading and pushing my own music onto others, which can feel tiresome. Because of the environment, we not only collectively understood each of the jazz domains we were speaking in (bebop, latin, swing, free, modal, odd meter, etc.) - we felt collectively emboldened to deliver what was expected of them.
Element Five: Breaking Rules
A jazz musician holds an individual responsibility between generating units of ideation perfectly within domain rules, while breaking those rules with the field’s requisite expectation of innovation. Sawyer describes this responsibility as a ‘tension’ for the jazz playing individual (1992). While this tension in an individual in jazz could be a microcosm, the corresponding macrocosm of inner tension of a jazz group could be influenced by personnel (group members / leader), shared experience of domain or the lack thereof, and what Vijay Iyer (2004) referred to as situatedness – the ecology and environment in which the improvisation takes place (a school, a venue, a basement).
Both the trio and quintet held this group tension onstage of ideation, consciousness, and pressures of innovation, of which we went in and out of consciousness individually and as a group mentality. Having a well known jazz journalist in the audience that night certainly pushed us to embody innovation in our own playing and as a group.
Review
Since Pressing and Sawyer, research in group jazz improvisation has developed a more ecological and social understanding of improvisation as it pertains to the identity of the jazz musician and the social structures in which the improviser exists (Toynbee, 2017; Love, 2017; MacDonald 2005, 2006). A study of a jazz trio performance in London (Doffman, 2009) revealed musicians with bonded experiences allow for greater trust within a band to take risks, documenting a soloist’s ability to deviate and improvise contrastingly to the rhythm section. The drummer of this trio noted personal hesitation to pull out fancy tricks in a situation with a player they just met, for fear of ‘scaring them away’ (p.144). In ecological research of jazz (MacDonald, 2005), these sorts of colloquialisms best explain aspects of improvisation that the field of music cognition has not quite yet accounted for, where studying jazz as a social process would benefit. Finally, it is important to note that the Limb and Braun study of jazz pianists under the fMRI scan show only a snapshot of what happens in the brain, unlike an EEG (Electroencephalograph) that would show brain activity in real time.
Conclusion
Research on the psychology of improvisation in jazz performance, as well as the ecological influence on jazz musicians and their improvisations, is young, and has been slowly embraced within music perception and cognition fields. While I find Sawyer’s model (1992) to be a comprehensive way to examine improvisation in performance, it doesn’t account for the psychological profile of the jazz musician, nor their place within the ecological system, the importance of which later has been noted (Monson, 1996; MacDonald 2005, 2006). Similarly, Edward Sarath’s ‘self/Self’ integration model is an idealization of individual transcendental consciousness into creative artistic achievement, but doesn’t account for laborious grunt-work of spontaneous ideation, attaining fluency in jazz domains, ecological social processes of jazz groups, nor the psychological effects of these three aspects of improvisation of which musicians live. Raymond MacDonald (2005, 2006) accounts for identity within hegemonic social structures of jazz, which certainly affect lives and autobiographical narratives of musicians, something I find useful to examine as a player, and personally the most resonant in terms of my lived life experience of jazz and performing music, informing how I might be able to advise younger musicians and students. Additionally, I find MacDonald’s work on understanding the identity of a jazz musician something to be important in defining a musician’s lived experience within the genre (for example, why people become jazz musicians against financial ruin, why people go into jazz music for a living as opposed to other music realms and stay there aside from the love of it, and understanding of musicians who work within multiple genres, how coming into jazz from different genres can affect one’s identity as a jazz musician or vice versa). I sense that an increased understanding of the ecological and social identities of jazz musicians with respect to the hegemonic structures therein will improve our understanding of improvisation psychologically, in addition to understanding multimodalities from improvisation and jazz colloquialisms such as ‘telling a story’ (Iyer, 2004).
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Brittany Anjou is a jazz trained pseudo performance artist, composer, improviser, pianist, vibraphonist, writer, working musician, educator, and lead singer of the experimental punk metal band, Bi TYRANT. She holds a bachelor’s in jazz and philosophy from NYU, and is a current M.A. student in Music Psychology, Education and Wellbeing postgraduate program at the University of Sheffield (2021), designing and conducting a pilot thesis study on the wellbeing of musicians in NYC during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her research interests include wellbeing for professional musicians, improvisation, transcendence, consciousness, attunement, phenomenology, oral traditions, cultural studies, performance studies, and psychology of performance. Her critically acclaimed album Enamiĝo Reciprokataj can be heard here. She currently loves Tibetan singing bowls now more than ever.
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