Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its own right.
Experimental free jazz avant-garde jazz is a 20th-century Invention. Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed in the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz and modern classical musics. Exponents of free improvised music include saxophonists Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brötzmann and John Zorn, drummer Christian Lillinger, trombonist George Lewis, guitarists Derek Bailey, Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith and the improvising groups Spontaneous Music Ensemble, The Music Improvisation Company, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and AMM.
In an atonal context, free improvisation refers to where the focus shifts from harmony to other dimensions of music: timbre, melodic intervals, rhythm and the spontaneous interaction between musicians. Although performers may choose to play in a certain style or key, or at a certain tempo, conventional songs are highly uncommon in free improvisation; more emphasis is generally placed on mood, texture or more simply, on performative gesture than on preset forms of melody, harmony or rhythm. These elements are improvised at will, as the music progresses. Source
Afraaz Mulji, Tanzanian born currently living in Toronto, Canada has been a practitioner of Free Avant Garde music for 8 years. Below videos are some of his assorted compositions in the said genre.
Evolution of the Glitch (Side A)
Exploding in Reverse (Side B)
Subscribe to his YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk8gVGdVx76KQSRMI4bBxnA
You can watch Afraaz’s “live” piano performances at the newly reopened Aga Khan Museum on July 8, 11, and 12. The theme of his pop-up performances at the Museum is Purists Beware, a series he has presented across Canada. Having also performed in the U.S., the U.K., and Spain, Mulji believes the upcoming performances will allow him to “engage with the audience in a special and unique way.”
Click link to learn more: https://the.ismaili/canada/young-musician-hopes-aga-khan-museum-performances-will-inspire-and-unite
So excited to hear Mulji perfrom at the AKM! We need more ismaili artists like him.
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