If I know how it will sound, I’m not improvising. If I know it will be good, if I have the time to make the judgement and choices that go with it, I’m not improvising. If I’m going to my safe and happy places, I’m not improvising.
If I’m jumping off a cliff and flapping my arms, praying for flight and magic, and playing what comes, as it comes, I’m improvising. All those other things are composition and performance and desire able and admirable, and far more likely successful to play before others.
Still one is more like the tricks of magicians, and the other attempts at wizardry.
Once I spent a nice chunk of change to watch Keith Jarrett live. 2.5 hours of hard, gut, mind, and soul wrenching labor. It was actually painful to watch, and most of it not so special. He’d work at a thing that came, get tricky, then, having failed to find the song in the air, move on as soon as he could find a place to go.
He did not stop. He kept straining, listening, reaching, playing, mostly not getting it. I sat there, in front row seats of the war memorial opera house, silently rooting, praying for whatever god gave him glimpses of what is always all around us, to give him a break.
In 2.5 hours of playing, we had the sublime privilege to hear ten minutes of real magic. The rest was . . . variable. You could see it in his face.
Why tell this? Well, jumping off buildings and flapping your arms in hope of flight tends to go very badly. But once in awhile, just for an immeasurable moment, you get a little air.
Don’t sweat the not great stuff. It is the stuff you have to play through to find the magical stuff.
Best regards,
Ed