Article from Dagbladet (norwegian): Page 1 | Page 2
Why have I always found improvisation to be more rewarding than playing “normal” music? Since there is a very weak tradition of improvisation – to say the least –among oboists, this question always puzzled me. I have been trying for years to find an explanation.
Not very long ago I discovered why. For me the trance of playing is extremely important. I enjoy being inside the sound, being heavily involved in the process. The trance is deeper and more intense when I invent or explore music in real time, rather than interpreter or perform material that is already composed. Improvisation requires a fuller state of mind than normal playing.
This state of mind, the active meditation when being inside and playing the music, may be considered a more primitive form. When juggling the electronic sounds and events in an improvisational manner, it resembles the first human being who incidentally happened to blow into a bone pipe and discovered the fun of doing sound experiments, or suddenly heard rhythmical patterns while hitting rocks or wooden chops. Whatever the first instruments were, individuals probably created music in a very spontaneous way. Again and again these first musicians would take up their primitive instruments and make patterns of sound, just because it was a good feeling. They enjoyed the state of meditation, trance, or if you will, the ecstasy of music.
Although the tools of the trade are different in our days, digital and even artificially intelligent as they may be, the wellbeing and altered state of improvisation is exactly the same. In spite of electronics and sophisticated woodwinds, what the caveman and I want to achieve is basically the same.
We used to call it “live electronics”. The term indicated a different form than the electronic music that was fully pre-programmed on tape or in computers. From the beginning of 1985 I designed the set up of synthesizers and other equipment as extensions of the oboe, primarily with this perspective in mind. I had very little pre-recorded material in my performances. If any, I wanted all pre-recorded material to be manipulated in real time during concerts. It is a creative hang-up. But I believe such self-imposed limitations are necessary in the world of electronic music. The creative possibilities are almost endless. To feel comfortable I need to define a narrower frame.
Inspired by Danish filmmakers I find a certain comfort when holding on to the following “dogma of improlectronica”:
No pre-recorded material in improlectronica will have a duration of more than 10 seconds
If longer, this material must be thoroughly manipulated in the performance
When doing solo concerts, I usually feel that the room – the concert hall – makes us a duet. I play with, and not in, a room. The reflections are a living response from the concert hall. To hear this accompaniment, the music must not be too loaded.
Therefore I hang on to another dogma:
The sound level of improlectronica must balance with the unamplified original acoustic sound of the oboe. Only the added effects will be amplified, not the acoustic sound it self.
Composition is the planning of an organic and unforeseen sequence of musical events and situations.
“Code less, create more” - Trolltech
Interpretation is the process of provoking musical material that I would not expect