Paul Grabowsky : AIM Creative in Residence

It might seem strange to have a contribution from a musician, indeed a jazz musician, in a volume aimed at managers working in the business sector, but I have taken on this challenge with relish.

Music does not exist in a vacuum - it is made by people for people, and while the sort of music I make is probably best described as 'niche', it nevertheless has demanded enormous concentration, dedication and discipline to learn how to play it, find my own voice in it, and build an audience for what I love. I will tell you about some aspects of my life in music, but I will focus particularly on the subject of improvisation, and how its principles can possibly relate to non-musical situations. This is basically an essay about creativity, As music is my modus operandi, it will form the basis of the argument. So bear with me!

The Artist's Life

Music has paved my path through life from its very beginning. You might imagine some screen ham from the thirties gesturing expansively with arm over brow, loudly declaiming "Music is my life!", and think how indulgent it must be to believe such a thing, let alone actually do it, but there are those of us who are, in reality, called to be artists. It is a calling, because there are so many good reasons not to be one: the pay is moderate at best, largely unpredictable both in frequency and sum, years of endless toil can lead to the eventual realization that the charmed success of your dreams may partially, or entirely elude you, and then there is the endless preoccupation with oneself, which drives partners to distraction, and raises eyebrows in more 'normal' people. And yet, I would not have it any other way, because as an artist, and particularly within my discipline, there are many valuable lessons to be learned about, and applied to, life.

In fact, we can talk about art being a metaphor for life, an attempt to describe life, to cut through to its essence using symbols, myth, memory, coded languages and gestures. We can see in art a struggle to posit a moral or ethical position, express deep feelings about love and death, construct through that most remarkable of human attributes, the imagination, a better world than the one we inhabit in 'real' time. For it is also true that art speaks to us down the ages, across time, from ages past when, although things may have been vastly different, human beings nevertheless faced the same existential challenges as we do.

So we 'creatives' must regard certain principles as being fundamental;

1. Art never lies. The truth about the maker will always be revealed through the work. It is impossible, once revealed to the world, to attempt to pretend that it is something it is not, for eventually the truth will come out.

2. The Work is never finished. There may be many 'works' along the way, but the artist's trajectory is a lifelong one. You don't often hear of artists retiring, because to do so would be to withdraw from life itself.

3. Change is inescapable. And desirable, of course. But it is worth always considering that the creative impulse is dynamic, forward moving, exploratory and demands fearlessness. The creative life is not for the faint-hearted.

IMPROVISATION AS DISCIPLINE

I began training as a pianist at age 5. At first it was a conventional path, using the books recommended by the Australian Music Examinations Board (AMEB) as a graduated path towards greater command of the instrument. As a child, one does not question these things. Pieces are learned, and you have the satisfaction of playing them correctly, plus the reward of moving on to the next one. It all has a gentle and sensible logic about it. Or so it seems. One thing commonly misunderstood by non-musicians about music is that the notes and symbols printed on the page, although referred to as 'music' are, in fact, not music at all. They are actually a set of coded instructions, a map or guide, which, if correctly followed should hopefully result in something approximating the composer's intentions. In fact a common musician's argot for sheet music is 'chart'.

Music, of course, has nothing to do as such with printed instructions. It has existed for countless thousands of years without pen and paper, and is not a priori dependent on the existence of anything other than people making it in order to exist. Therefore it is important for us to start to understand music as being a set of languages spoken, non-verbally, by pretty much as many cultures as there are using the spoken word. It seems to be a natural impulse to make music, and no society that I am aware of has successfully prevented people from making it in some form, try as they might.

So as I got older and wiser, I started to understand that music continued whether the notes were in front of me or not. After all, those notes had to come from somewhere, and it dawned on me that they were dreamed up by various people who were then able to transmit them via this coded language. But the original thought must have existed somewhere else, in a pre-textural form. I also noticed that I got great enjoyment out of simply playing the piano for no other reason than to see what I could make up at it myself. I began to improvise.

What, exactly, is improvisation? The Australian Oxford Dictionary has three definitions of the verb 'to improvise':

1. Compose or perform extempore (which, in turn, is defined as 'without preparation').

2. Construct from materials not intended for the purpose.

3. Devise, invent on the spur of the moment.

Interestingly for our purposes, none of these definitions quite captures the meaning of improvisation as I understand and apply it.

However, there are elements in all three that help us to get close to it. In an improvisation as applied in a musical form like jazz, or in improvising the cadenza in a Mozart concerto, as some soloists are able to do, there is certainly a lot of preparation involved. In the case of jazz, there is a legacy of recordings which have captured the improvisations of many great masters in full flight, and from which we have been able to identify a language or set of languages that we recognize as jazz. Of course the recordings are only the tip of the iceberg, a point to which I will return. In the case of Mozart, there would be years of immersion in texts which discuss musical performance conventions as they existed in Mozart's day, so while spontaneity plays a role, the preparation is the thing which makes it authentic, and therefore appropriate to the situation. There is also the mental discipline involved in knowing how much or how little to play in an improvisation, and the actual material itself: note choice, dynamics, sound production. So here is a first principle of improvisation as I understand it:

Improvisation, to be effective, requires great preparation and self- discipline. Now, as egards the appropriateness or not of materials used, that rather depends on a number of things. If I want to remain true to a particular language or style of music, then I may choose to make decisions about what or what not to play according to that style. A lot of situations demand that we work within their constraints, otherwise at some point the references around which we are creating something become obscured and the intention may become lost. It can however be interesting to employ form time to time things that may lie outside a particular language in order to give a new context to the language employed, or to shed new light on otherwise familiar material. This type of lateral approach is something I find very useful in many musical situations. It is how ideas are employed, as much as the content of the ideas themselves, which really matters.

So, another princple:

Effective improvisation requires a flexibility of response, based on knowledge of what elongs where, and how best and most creatively to make decisions in the moment.

Which brings us to the third, and last, definition of improvisation.

The spur of the moment, a wonderful word-picture, is exactly where improvisation takes place. A true improvisation lives for, and in, the moment of its creation, so you can imagine that an extended improvisation is the sum of countless millions of improvised decisions, each one existing only in the passing flash of its execution, and yet somehow managing to be part of something utterly coherent. Even improvisations that are made up of seemingly random and disconnected events can have an inherent logic not immediately evident; it remains the quality of the concept, and the ability of its creator(s) to realize it, that makes the difference between good and bad improvising.

And therefore:

Improvisations exist in, and are about, the moment, but should relate or comprise a meaningful experience to the listener and maker.

Why is this important? Because quick thinking grounded in strong discipline, with a wide frame of reference and access to immediate outcomes would seem very much to cater to the needs of a successful information-age mentality.

The Improvisor as a Team Player

Virtually everything I have said thus far relates to the process of the individual improviser. We are used to thinking of the creative world as largely the domain of the loner, people who prefer to think of themselves as self-sufficient, on a solo journey through the oceans, calm and stormy, of the imagination. Which is to some extent true of all of us. But music making is more often than not done in teams, from duos to massive ensembles, and so the need to be working together toward a common goal lies at the heart of every team musical enterprise. In classical ensembles, where every player is literally reading from the same page, or following a set of instructions which are clear to each player, the opportunities for functioning with one voice are evident, and the larger the group, the more a hierarchy of decision making is accepted as being the way forward. Section leaders are responsible for various decisions which might be described as micro-managing the expressive vision required by the conductor, to whose artistic authority the orchestra bends, at least in theory.

There is, in the world's great orchestras, a tremendous sense of ownership by each individual, from the back desks to the concertmaster, over the music being made. Not surprisingly, given the scarcity of available positions, and the immense competition amongst eligible musicians.

What about when improvisers play together? I have already pointed out that often improvisations take place within commonly understood forms. The most famous in our culture is the 12 bar blues, which arose originally as a sort of musical testimonial or lament amongst disenfranchised and poor rural African Americans during the 19th Century, and went on to become the most robust musical form of our era, influencing everyone from Gershwin to the Chilli Peppers. When musicians are playing a blues, there is a series of chords which cycles every set number of bars (usually 12), and the improvising takes place within that structure. This principle of a repeating cycle applies to a lot of blues, rock and jazz music, and allows for an infinite number of approaches. Incidentally, cyclical structures of various kinds turn up in all kinds of musical languages, particularly in South and East Asia, the Middle East and throughout Africa .

There is also a type of improvising that allows for no structure at all. This is called free improvisation, in which a group of players simply agree to go on stage and make (hopefully) music together spontaneously. Now, this is only likely to succeed if the basic principles as outlined earlier are understood by each individual. But in order for the group to function well, additional principles need to apply, and these are some of the fundamentals of creative team building. The first, and most important, is

1. Trust. One thing that every good musician has, or should have, is pride in his or her craft. A healthy ego is a basic requirement for any self respecting creative person, but that should never be an excuse for behaving in a way in which one ego seeks to dominate a situation with no sense of where it fits into the group. Trust is everything in improvising, because your contribution during the improvisation will always be heard in relation to the input of the other players, therefore you must trust that input as being in everyway as important as your own. Know when to lead, and when to withdraw, and always engage with an open mind. The object of the improvisation is the sublimation of the individual into the process of the group.

2. The Ability to Listen. It might seem obvious that to listen is a fundamental in music making, but it is the most difficult thing to truly listen while playing. True listening can be an act of humility, a giving over of oneself, and therefore a goal to be desired. It can also be an analytical or critical activity, and very much engaged with its object. Listening strategically involves engaging in a discourse while imagining, even perhaps panning, where it might be leading. So there is in listening an active component and a passive one simultaneously, in the sense that you are receiving information, and immediately feeding it back into the conversation in order to move it forward.

3. Understand Process. This dynamic play of give and take is an ongoing process, a living thing. It will end when the group intelligence, that which is formed out of the actively and passively engaging egos of the mutually trusting and listening players, decides that the end has been arrived at. What the improvisers need to understand is that this process has been made by them as a team, that the contribution of each individual is what provides its input, but that it is the creation of the group. How the audience receives it is the next interesting piece of the puzzle.

Loving the Receptor

On a slightly philosophical note, it is my belief that the trajectory of creation is not complete until it is received by someone who looks, listens, reads, tastes, feels. Art only takes on a resonance in its reception, otherwise we would not necessarily be aware of its existence, and would therefore have nothing to say or feel about it. The audience member's (let's call her the 'receptor') relationship with performance is a dynamic one, because the way the receptor interacts with the creator, particularly where improvisation is involved, can influence the decisions that improvisers might make.

Now this is different from a situation of pure passive reflection, such as you might have looking at a painting in a gallery, though it is worth bearing in mind that you might respond differently to the same painting every time you see it, depending on your own developmental state. As we know, music exists in time, and improvised music exists for one time only, unless it is captured on a recording. This process puts it suddenly in the same category as a painting, namely as an object of contemplation. Film is interesting in this sense, as it exists in time also, while remaining virtually the same (depending on print and projector quality etc).

So the receptor is all important, and worthy of the improviser's deepest respect. As the recipient of a one-off creative act, the receptor is sharing in something significant. If the performers demonstrate real mastery, the effect is exhilarating, energizing, life-affirming, and something shared by all concerned. A social activity, to be sure, and one that surely reminds us of the vastness of human potential.

Why Improvisors Make Better Lovers

People who are used to executing their well-honed skills in situations requiring spontaneity and immediacy are not necessarily loose cannons. As we have seen, it takes years of training and immense self discipline to be a good improviser. Because improvisers have learned the value of a courageous approach to their instruments, in that they always search for new ways to do things and new avenues for self expression, they have been in my experience especially good at using music to bridge cultural divides.

In 1993, I formed a 20 piece ensemble called the Australian Art Orchestra. Its vision statement talks about the need for a large ensemble made up of musicians who can both improvise and play notated music to a high level. Every one in this ensemble is a leader, each with a string of recordings behind them, many are composers or educators. It includes a former concertmaster of a major orchestra, two professors and a head of music at a leading secondary school. The AAO has gone on to play all over the world, has issued several

recordings, and is now recognised as one of Australia 's most important assets in contemporary music. We have realized projects with musicians from cultures as diverse as Bali, South India, and indigenous Australia . It is worth looking at these to see how the ability to improvise leads to very positive outcomes as the core of a working partnership.

How, and why does the improviser's skill play a role in bridging cultural divides?

1. Music is a non-verbal method of communication. Exactly why people made music originally may never be known, although surely the need to make sounds which go beyond the conventional expressive abilities of language must be at the heart of it. As humans, we all feel things which lie outside of our verbal capacity to express them. Music is one of the ways we express the ineffable, and I have found it to be a powerful way of breaking the cultural ice.

2.  Creative improvisers are respectful of the act of creative expression. Respect for the meaning and significance of the collaborating partner's cultural protocols is essential in getting any cross-cultural partnerships off the ground. Many improvising musicians are quick to grasp some first principles of other modes of expression; they are used to making their instruments do unusual things, and are generally excited at the prospect ofa the new. But beyond simply  making sounds in imitation of something, there is the long process of learning the meaning of the collaboration from the partner's perspective. This is where collaborations of this nature are ultimately rewarding, and enriching.

3. As people who understand the meaning of process as a dynamic and living thing, improvisers know that it is the process inherent in a project which counts. The performance indicators can be measured in various different ways, but the legacy of any collaboration is the knowledge shared along the road, not the applause of the audience. That is icing on the cake, but could hardly be construed as the justification for all the hard work. The trust earned, ability to listen and understanding of the process understood by each participant are the rewards of collaboration, and when this occurs across cultures, the benefits are great indeed.

As the Artistic Director of a large ensemble, and of the Queensland Music Festival, I try to apply the three principles of improvisation at all times. There is one overriding principle which sits behind them.

CHOOSE YOUR TEAM CAREFULLY. IF THE CHOICES ARE WISE, ALL ELSE WILL FOLLOW.

Look for flexible thinking, the ability to respond quickly while taking a long term view, to listen. These qualities will lead to trust, to mutually supportive creative thinking, and to goal setting which combines tactics and strategy within the same creative vision. Then sparks will fly.