Improvised music is made for listening

While all jazz is improvised music, not all improvised music is jazz. And that is about as good a place to start a discussion about the experimental art form collectively called "improvised music."

Starting tonight and continuing for two consecutive weekends, the Seattle Improvised Music Festival will feature a dozen musicians in various combinations, performing one of the most- difficult-to describe forms of modern music. There are several saxophone players (Wilson Shook, Wally Shoup, Kelvin Pittman), keyboard players (Gust Burns and Jonathan Zorn — not to be confused with avant-garde composer John Zorn), a trumpet player (Greg Kelley), even a singer (Liz Tonne) — many of whom perform with sophisticated, electronic effects.

"I see it as a tangled core of different strands of music that developed out of jazz and free jazz in the '60s and '70s," said Burns, director of the festival, whose history goes back 24 years.

"It's also heavily experimental, electronic music that has nothing to do with jazz. It doesn't have swing; it doesn't have a groove. Then, there's a post-rock, post- Sonic Youth spirit, noise music. It's kind of a tangled mess that has an improvisational and experimental core."

That is about as practical a definition that exists for what audiences will hear at the Chapel Performance Space in Wallingford's Good Shepherd Center, where the Friday and Saturday concerts — including tonight's — will take place. The Sunday concerts will be at Gallery 1412 on Capitol Hill.

The musicians are a mix of local performers and musicians from the Northeast and from Europe, where, Burns said, funding for avant-garde music tends to be more generous.

"Improvised music is not music for entertainment per se," said Burns, 30. "It can be entertaining, but it's not going to a club and dancing. It demands actual listening. It's just like going to an art gallery, or contemporary art show.

"You have to try to wipe clean your preconceptions of what it should be and just let it speak to you the way that it wants to. Instead of asking, 'Where is that ride cymbal?' or 'Where is the frontman? ... ' It's not about that. It's about listening to the sounds."

Improvised music, by definition, is not for everyday consumption, and the opportunities to hear a comprehensive repertoire are limited. The Seattle Improvised Music Festival, which features both solo and ensemble performances, also includes two Saturday workshops and two Sunday panel discussions, all taking place at Gallery 1412.

"If there's a defining characteristic of the music," explained Burns, "it's that there's an interest in sound and how the sound is structured and what the sound means, rather than in the notes. Implicit in that ... is sound as a physical phenomenon, a shift away from harmony and melody, to texture and timbre and space."

Burns grew up in Seattle listening to grunge and hip-hop. In high school he learned jazz piano while listening to punk rock. He studied jazz piano in college while honing an interest in noise music, which utilizes unconventional elements like dissonance, atonality and cacophony. Most of the overlap between improvised music and jazz is perhaps found in the musicianship.

"We might be doing different things musically," Burns said. "But there's often a lot of camaraderie with musicians because of what we're doing with our instruments. A jazz bassist might hear a bass player who is not a jazz player, but he's just a phenomenal instrumentalist. Maybe he's not swinging, but he's an incredible bass player."

Hugo Kugiya: hkugiya@yahoo.com