Free-Classical - a workshop seminar on improvisation for classical musicians

The Free Classical workshop seminar was curated by the musician and professor Geir Lysne in partnership with CEMPE. Lysne has for many years run The Norwegian Wind Ensemble’s (DNBE) real time music project. Joining him as coaches were the German avant-garde cellist and composer Jörg Brinkmann, the much sought after contemporary oboist and improviser Christopher Redgate, and the violinist Alison Blunt, another experienced improviser. The four were each assigned a group of musicians for the two days of workshops, which were open to the public.

– I’m here to become more free, says a student who has travelled from Copenhagen. Another student says: – I think like a classical musician, and then it’s not relevant whether you like a piece or not. My teacher says that ‘you have to turn everything you play into your favourite piece’.

Classical musicians normally perform music written by others. How can they connect more intimately with themselves, their instruments and their own personal tastes?

Geir Lysne and the DNBE have spent years exploring classical musicians’ shared references. What happens when you give classical musicians more artistic input and decision-making powers? Do classically trained musicians have any shared linguistic meeting places for improvisation?

The Free Classical seminar begins with an open rehearsal in which the musicians from the DNBE show us how they work with group improvisation. We witness how they communicate with eye contact, signs and movements.

Later some of them talk about how they got to where they are today. The focus has been on building safe frameworks and trust between the musicians in the ensemble and to decide on musical parameters instead of setting stylistic rules to allow them to express themselves freely. It is both challenging and rewarding.

– Your emotional range is so much greater when you improvise – it gives you higher highs and lower lows after a concert, says DNBE oboist Ingunn Lien Gundersen.

Next, we meet classical wind and brass players from the children’s programme Musikk på Majorstuen, who demonstrate how they practise improvisation from the age of 10–13 an onwards in order to broaden their understanding of sound and strengthen the relationship with their instruments. The young musicians perform spontaneously, playfully and beautifully, and they reflect in a mature way on the music they have just played – on what they heard and what they did.

It is day two, and we are joining the first workshop after the joint morning meeting. The six musicians in one of the string groups sit down in a circle together with Alison, all with their instruments at the ready. She asks them to pay attention to their breathing before they begin to play and encourages them to close their eyes. The room falls silent before the double bass player launches into the first improvisation of the day. One by one the others join in, weaving their contributions together, expanding on them before fading out again to leave the bass player’s theme to complete the improvisation, just the way it started..

Next, they talk about what happened, what they liked about it and what they observed.

– I found the pizzicato in the bass very inspiring, says one of them. – I tried to listen to what I didn't play, says the double bass player, in other words what he could have played but didn’t, and what that did to the soundscape.

They also explore what silence does to the music.

– Silence generates a lot of potential energy in what you do next, Alison says, before going on to talk about the importance of listening to yourself and your inner critic.

– Acknowledge the critic, but it’s up to you whether to act on it. You can’t just ask it to go away...

The workshop ends with an improvisation game, a kind of creative relay in which you take over the theme played by the musician before you and make it your own. Musical themes flow through the circle, they are passed on and imitated, gradually and abruptly transformed, before the rules of the game are forgotten and themes begin crossing the circle with several musicians joining in simultaneously, then taking a rest before engaging with the music again. (It all ends in a glorious cacophony which definitely should have been recorded and preserved for posterity.)

We catch up with the student from Copenhagen towards the end of the seminar.

– I came here to break free – and now I've got the guts to do it! I’ve been given help to dare take risks, and I've acquired tools that I can use in my further training. It’s about ridding yourself of the rules and just say f*** it.