To Really See Someone Improvise

Saturday was a good one. There haven’t been a ton of unadulterated good ones lately. So many things can make your day beyond shaky/shitty right now. You find out that the economic downturn has touched you or someone close to you. You open a news app, even though you promised you wouldn’t this morning, and there is a headline whose utter cruelty and destructive spirit makes you wonder about the human spirit at its most basic level. You realize there is no fathomable way our country will regain some of what we are hacking off our operations at the moment. But I didn’t come here to write about that. In some sense I came here specifically to not write about that.
I had a rehearsal with Big Trouble on Saturday morning that was so enjoyable. Here’s a horrendous photo of me from the beginning of the rehearsal.

Wow rough.

We as a band have finally hit that age where there is a vastly more giving spirit than there is a self-oriented spirit. I remember playing with some adults when I was in high school. It was Harry Chalmiers, then President of MacPhail, and Clea Galhano, then teacher at MacPhail. We were playing two songs at a fundraiser and we were going to do “Black Orpheus.” Everyone was trying to make their solo shorter, more collaborative, more inviting and spicy for the players supporting. It was night and day to my experience playing jazz with the high school student peers I was with most of the time. And, lest I sound like I was above the high school bullshit, I was absolutely oriented towards getting my solo in, getting my feature in, getting my shine on. But I saw this future, far away at the time and now firmly in my pocket, of truly generous collaboration. This weekend Big Trouble was making little tucks, trims and coda adjustments to make some new songs sing. Throughout the whole affair the goal was to tease the fundamental out of the composition. It was song-oriented, it was selfless, it was rewarding. It was also efficient, but not in the mode of ruthless efficiency that I have been sometimes praised/critiqued for throughout my years as a bandleader. This was the efficiency of four adults trying to get the most out of their 2 hours away from their families, jobs, et cetera.
After that it was off to a guitar lesson for my daughter S. and then we stuck around for a concert from Bring Your Kids at Cadenza. This was our second time seeing this group and the first time was amazing. Comedy, music, kid-oriented. The improv is front and center in the group and it gave me a moment to hone in on two improvisers who are on a whole different level than the rest of the players on the gig. All the players are good, no doubt. But these two people (who I suspected and just confirmed via online bios are a couple) have that comfort of improv that appears effortless but but being a middling improviser I understand is about as far from effortless as you can get. It’s Alsa Bruno and Morgan LeClaire.
To see great improvisation is to often see the absence of something. It’s the absence of overly formalized intros. It’s the absence of unnecessary adjustments to a speaking voice to accidentally call attention to the fact that this is suddenly improvised, everybody watch out, I’m pretending to be a lumberjack. It’s a comfort with blankness, a comfort with fullness. And an absolute commitment to something, and an equally absolute commitment to ditching that particular something when it has served its purpose. I’ve been around great improvisers in my life. I’ve seen poets and emcees arrive in a moment with no preconceived notions of where they will go, I’ve seen them rest on no crutch, rely on no safety net and deliver an image, a moment, a performance that is deep, rich and blissfully unscalable. It isn’t a moment waiting to be committed to tape. Not a moment to be committed to the page. Just a moment, imperfectly drawn in to a room, god-crafted for the energy in that room. When I see Morgan and Alsa improvise I see no artifice. I didn’t see the moment where the brain decided it was time to start improvising. I didn’t see the moment where the artist felt the trappings of the stage. The performance for me started long before the listed show time. The guitarist was playing. The kids were interacting. My youngest N. was connecting with them before we even found our seats. When Alsa or Morgan took on a character or altered their voice they did so completely. They did so with an unflagging memory for the traits of the character they were taking on and when the bit ended they seemed to shed the concept so thoroughly as to have never occupied it. Alsa used a stuffed animal to pretend to be a high pitched nasal sickness and the impact was so thorough and deep. I bet reading that sentence you are scratching your head. It’s a kids show, he was pretending to be a cold with a weird stuffy, who cares. I care. I care about great work and that was great work.

Watching them I thought about the great pianists I’ve played with, the drummers I’ve seen who fluidly become a vessel for the music, seeming to lose the indecision that most of us attach to musical choices. A vessel for entire sets, for entire universes, for an eternity that only stops when the eternity ceases being eternal. Where is the self-editing? Where is the self-policing? When do you stop? When do they stop? What should you play? How can I be generous and dominant? How can I be generous and miniature? How can I give the moment what is asked for when I am part of the moment? How do we paint so together that the word together is too distant? If you ask you’ve stopped improvising and started thinking.

Joe Horton is one of the greatest improvisers I have ever had the honor of playing music with. Horton made an amazing piece of art called “A Hill in Natchez.” Visuals, music, theater all at the Southern many years ago. He closed the piece with a statement in his voice that I paraphrase/remember this way “In making this work I realized we aren’t all related, I realized we are all one.” It stuck with me, especially when it came from someone who I had seen go so deep into a moment, someone who had worked hard to be available for anything in the realm of improvisation.
I was wearing very comfortable pants while watching this Bring Your Kids show. Why was I wearing comfortable pants? Well I was just out to bring the kids to their lessons so I wasn’t wearing anything remotely fancy. I leaned back a couple times in a wide ass stance on this couch at Cadenza with my arm around my daughter N. while witnessing these two utterly amazing improvisors and smiling from ear to ear. I’ve spent a lot more money to see great improvisors in much less comfortable pants and I have to say I preferred this. Thank you Alsa and Morgan and thank you to the rest of the Bring Your Kids performers.