CN And it’s interesting to see the differences across cultural boundaries. There’s a lot of discussion about the difference between what’s been happening here in Norway with social distancing measures, and the much more relaxed strategy adopted by Sweden. We share a long border, so the concern is direct. But also, the conceptual concerns involve what is gained and lost, and certainly who is sacrificed. There is still a lot unknown, and people are molding the same handful of factual information into very different shapes.

I’m very curious what will be left after this grand improvisation. What kinds of language will remain in place, and what new syntaxes will remain to continue these conversations? Will any of it allow us to maintain some of the softening of the damage to the environment that our social and production activity has caused?

You mentioned utilizing the same language that’s already been there. We’ve engaged musical aesthetic analysis in terms of systems for a long time. As an obvious example, Bach has often been spoken about in terms of the interlocking counterpoint systems of his composition. But I remember, oh, thirty years ago, this period of our listening to Steve Coleman and Cecil Taylor, and thinking about the expanded systemic structures of their music. Though with different aesthetic outcomes, each one engaged a dynamic architecture that employed both musical and extra musical systems; a structural coding of cultural symbols into music.

To build on ideas of structure for a moment, one thing I find in much of your music is this rhythmic structure that itself seems to implement generative systems within the improvisation, which itself is a system. So it’s kind of fractal in that way. Can you elaborate on your internal process within improvisation, the way you build phrases into other phrases, expand upon them, and collapse them again?

CT Well, I could say a lot of things. Recently I was listening to this interview with Cecil Taylor by Marian McPartland on Piano Jazz—that show on NPR where McPartland would interview other jazz pianists. And this one with Cecil Taylor must have been from the ’80s or ’90s. It was one of the more interesting interviews with Cecil, I think because he respected Marian McPartland’s musicianship. He was a lot more forthcoming about his process, in specific, technical terms. Like you noted, Steve Coleman’s approach is perhaps more structuralist or restructuralist, drawing on really specific cultural information sets. And then Cecil Taylor’s process may be about evolving more of a referential or symbolic system in which to engage as a personality, which would seem to be his thing. There’s still a lot of information, but it’s less about parsing those information sets than it is about establishing a kind of psycho-spiritual symbolic system and then functionally engaging with that to generate or move through an improvisation.

You mentioned fractals. A lot of how I derive rhythmic information has always come from a larger consideration of what exists in the sound space—actually just the entire aesthetic space—and recognizing patterns. The macro and the micro really do interact. Because everything extends from vibration in that sense, at its root, even pitch. All of those features, timbre, what have you, ultimately exist in relationship with periodicity and vibration, and they extend from that into a notion of perceived rhythm, for instance, in the sense of a beat. But it’s about where you apply or discern an object versus some other system. I think ultimately we get down to discerning, “Okay, I’m going to apply myself to this object at this resolution. At that point, I’ll consider this element as a primary feature or something that can be worked with.” But the way we work with it is often symbolic. I say that because you mentioned the Bach thing. I’ve read a number of things on the organizational aspects of Bach. There are obvious counterpoint features that he’s working with. But if you go deeper into performance practice at the time, a lot has a basis that is also liturgical. And the idea of Bach as an improviser was important.

We know that it was actually common performance practice for those church organists at the time to be able to compose and improvise, and that still exists in the organ tradition today. There’s a lot about what key applies to which feast day. And the key you’re in would have to relate to the text of the sermon and to the hymn that would be sung next. So in terms of symbolic systems and other things you use to orient how you are improvising or composing, there are always multiple levels that influence your purpose. That exists today through the example of someone like Cecil Taylor, who sought this other, extra-musical information to engage in musical improvisation. And I think it extends to really any aesthetic enterprise. So the improvisational condition, rather than being something special to music or theater or improv comedy, is actually a feature we all engage with. I mean, this is kind of a hackneyed, improviser-speak thing—”We improvise every day”—but it’s true. What we do with language in conversation, for instance, is inherently an improvisational act.

CN Absolutely. I brought up the “everydayness” of improvisation because historically, I think we’ve moved away from a natural, emergent use of improvisation, certainly musically. The experience of music used to be much more closely intertwined with the dynamic experience of life. We can pinpoint when, at least in Western history, we began to clamp down into a much more structured attempt to define and hold ideas onto the page. At least from my perspective, improvisation, evolving through jazz in particular, has really been its own enlightenment project and helped usher us back to something inherently human in the way we engage with cultural practice and even just social practice that we had perhaps restrained a bit too much.

You said something about the larger sound space, and that brings us to this concept of noise. It’s part of our being in the world. Everything gives off noise. How do you see it belonging to your palette? What does noise mean for you musically, if anything?

CT Well, from an aesthetic perspective, it’s not that useful for me. Any application of audition to sound, or by extension, any attention to information, will yield some kind of relationship to it that removes the implication of chaos or disorganization that is at the root of the notion of noise from the broadest cultural perspective. Noise is a thing that is not organized, that is not controlled, or that is unpleasant versus sound. Take any sort of noise, and if you just listen and address it, you’ll very quickly evolve some sort of relationship to it that creates order, pattern, etcetera.

But I do engage with noise in my work in the sense that, as much as there is this will toward controlling and structuring things in the music-making improvisational act, I try to allow certain elements their own sort of informational life. It’s the willful lack of manipulation, or even lack of trying to parse information from a certain field, let’s say. I’ll term that a noise space or an irrational space—something that I purposely try not to control volitionally. As a musician, there are so many things I can immediately parse: “Oh, I’m hearing these rhythms in the bass.” Or, “This sound is in this frequency realm.” I can instantly identify and taxonomically define features of a noise as an information set, which renders it not noise. But I’m aware of and really welcome more chaotic elements. And that’s certainly one of the things the noise music world is trying to engage: that which has been heretofore termed extramusical or nonmusical sound—or visuals or whatever.

I value that noise music posture. But it requires some diligence to not impose too much information on a noise because that can quickly render it “not noise” in my mind. And then that suggests too many ways forward organizationally in order to reveal those specific features of that sound, if that makes sense. And what you gain from that is a structure, which for some people is a resolution to the noise “problem.” But what you lose are the myriad other ways that the noise could be perceived. So it’s more a state of mind for me. Whatever this sound field is, it’s full of unparsed information. To me, that’s what noise is, something that’s not rationalized. And I think it’s invaluable to retain some relationship to the irrational because that’s the doorway to another kind of perception. In a way, noise is an asymbolic space. In my own work, I try to leave some noise, almost preserving it as some sort of abstracted object as opposed to seeking a developmental rationale for it.

CN That allows it to remain dynamic as opposed to static and defined.

CT Exactly. And in that sense, you are dealing with more of what’s actually there, or what isn’t there that you’re then allowed to imagine. Once you start parsing the information too specifically to arrive at some structural relationship, like pitch, that’s usually inadequate to describe what’s actually going on. As much as it’s the basis of—particularly Western—musicmaking to identify pitch, it’s a severe reduction of information. If you just say, “Okay, a C,” simultaneously it means everything—because someone with perfect pitch can hear a tone there—and also nothing because there’s no other information. What does that sound like? It’s an almost complete abstraction.

CN Because we’re curious creatures, we will always want to make sense of something, and it can be almost more difficult to try not to. That’s one of the challenges of listening; we’ve been engineered to anticipate what’s coming next and to look for patterns.

I’ve also been thinking of noise in relation to the pandemic, and the perception of it as this most unwanted entity. It is an unwanted noise for us, complete in its generative capacity. It’s an interruption to what we have constructed as our useful signals. And yet it is there; it’s quite loud; and we have to contend with it. And even more interesting perhaps is that we have actually facilitated it in many different ways, irrespective of how it came to be. We are responsible for transporting it around the globe. And going back to the Anthropocene—we are creatures of one set among many interlocked in this system of lifeforms and life-ish-forms. Noise accompanies all existence and can be said to largely define this point in our evolution. As such, it also allows us to question the normative frameworks we’ve created.

CT Absolutely. With the pandemic, I’m struck by the idea of this situation as defining evolutionary event in many senses, where it’s less that the virus is affecting the mass directly but that by virtue of the fact that it is recognized as a universal problem, it has initiated a global reaction. Because when we’re talking about improvisation, it has to be stated again, what we’re really just talking about is the way things are.

When I’m performing, I’m never thinking only about music. It’s often kind of the last thing I’m thinking about. I’m more aware of all of this, how we’re moving through this dynamic system. And referencing Cecil Taylor, I’m abundantly aware that that was his space. It was never just about the notes—those existed as an interface, a reference system that he could use.

I’ve had this discussion with Vijay Iyer often, and he always references Wadada Leo Smith in saying that there is a certain crew of musicians who are done with the term improvisation. There is a movement by these great improvisers to just get rid of this word because it implies things that are now beside the point. There really isn’t any endeavor that doesn’t involve improvisation. It’s just a matter of degree. Invoking that term brings with it this weight of associations that distance it from other practices, and I don’t think that really functions today.