Tip

Moving the mouse cursor over the top of the page will display the menu bar.

This research investigates strategies for free improvisation, or “instant composition,” from the 1960s onwards. Instant composition is defined in this research as “working with concepts, structures, and limitations that stimulate interplay, coherence, and creativity in free improvisational contexts.” The research aim is to reemploy these strategies and find how they need to be adjusted to fit the contemporary jazz practice I share with Epoxy Quartet. Based on interviews, literature review, and practice-based experimentation, this research aims to develop exercises, instructions, or methods to co-create and co-evaluate expressive improvised performances. Although the strategies our quartet employs are rooted in an existing tradition of free improvisation – often atonal and cerebral music – we hold the artistic ambition to develop a musical idiom that is more lyrical and accessible. Therefore, the intended outcome of this research is a unique performance practice situated in the interstices between improvisation and composition, supported by well-developed methods to co-create and co-evaluate expressive improvised performances.

Tip

This page contains media that is intended to start playback automatically on opening. This may include sound. Your browser is blocking automated playback. Please click here to start media.

  • contents
    • Research report
    • Koen Joseph Gijsman
  • navigation
    overview
  • abstract
    This research investigates strategies for free improvisation, or “instant composition,” from the 1960s onwards. Instant composition is defined in this research as “working with concepts, structures, and limitations that stimulate interplay, coherence, and creativity in free improvisational contexts.” The research aim is to reemploy these strategies and find how they need to be adjusted to fit the contemporary jazz practice I share with Epoxy Quartet. Based on interviews, literature review, and practice-based experimentation, this research aims to develop exercises, instructions, or methods to co-create and co-evaluate expressive improvised performances. Although the strategies our quartet employs are rooted in an existing tradition of free improvisation – often atonal and cerebral music – we hold the artistic ambition to develop a musical idiom that is more lyrical and accessible. Therefore, the intended outcome of this research is a unique performance practice situated in the interstices between improvisation and composition, supported by well-developed methods to co-create and co-evaluate expressive improvised performances.
  • Koen Joseph Gijsman - Being Free, Together: Instant Composition in a Contemporary Multi-Instrumentalist Context - 2026
  • Meta
  • Comments
  • Terms