Abstract

What does artistic identity sound like in Experimental Improvised Music (EIM)? And how might researchers frame it? The first question seems easy to answer in particulars: those spiky clusters on the Gibson hollow-body guitar, that austere unpitched air stream through the tuba, their quartet mercurially slipping in and out of groove. But tracing what these “makers’ marks” have in common, and why they matter, is trickier. In this presentation I approach them in (Aristotelian) ethical terms, as an embodied quality of character that contributes to a flourishing musical life in EIM regardless of one’s individual aesthetic or ideological orientation.

I start from the observation that EIM practitioners choose their materials; works or stylistic conventions need not be the source. The choice of material manifests in idiosyncratic timbres, techniques, and tropes that form what is known as a “voice”, or a “Sound” in maturity. Musicians develop their Sounds over a lifetime in changing material and social environments. In Aristotelian terms, this also involves awareness of possible failure in deficiency (being a chameleon) or in excess (becoming a caricature).

I will explore these ideas also through video footage from a series of (Musical) Ethics Labs, part of the five-year interdisciplinary research project “(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics”. Here professional musicians show and discuss aspects of their diverse Sounds in response to a task to share a “resource” with ensemble members. Their music, stories, and self-reflection reveal one of the practice’s characteristic challenges at work.