The boundaries of improvisation

This special issue of FMQ highlights improvisation. We delve into the experiences of musicians who balance spontaneity and structure, revealing how improvisation shapes their creative processes and performances in kaleidoscopic ways.

When choral conductor Ida Olsonen does vocal painting with the Musta lammas choir (whose name translates as ‘black sheep’), no one knows what the performance will be like. In this column, Olsonen describes how an improvised choral performance unfolds – and how it is even possible to conduct choral improvisation in the first place.

Katarina Barruk is an Ume Sámi singer and songwriter from the Swedish side of the Sámi region, Sábmie. Barruk sings in her native language, Ume Sámi, which is in the UNESCO’s red list of critically endangered languages with just an estimated 100 speakers. Making her language heard across borders, Barruk’s live performances have improvised elements, and improvisation is an important force in her music that mixes traditional joik with pop. In this interview with FMQ, Barruk talks about her relationship with improvisation.

Folk musician, multidisciplinary improviser and educator Outi Pulkkinen and pianist-composer Kari Ikonen discuss improvisation, its limits and its potential. Both base their work on improvisation, and here they share their thoughts on what good improvisation is, why it is an attractive concept and how you can dispel your fear of failure with it.

How does improvisation manifest on Finnish records today – in jazz and beyond? In this review article, Matti Nives, the founder and creative director of the Helsinki-based label, festival and magazine We Jazz, takes an in-depth look at three recent releases.

Classical musicians are rediscovering the long-lost art of improvisation, which has been kept alive in jazz and folk. How does improvisation affect the brains of performers and listeners – and what does it require of each?

Libero Mureddu, who is completing a doctorate at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, creates sonic frameworks that blend algorithmic unexpectancies with collective improvisation. His work is at once art and research, as it focuses on observing the intuitive actions of improvising musicians. What is required for these intuitive actions to blossom in a performance, and how can technology and human musicianship communicate with each other?

The toughest yet most rewarding of all forms of musical expression, improvisation, has always thrived in Finland. Who knows, maybe the rigours of the freezing dark winter and the joys of the warm midnight sun form mental images that are easily translated into music. As far as the brave musicians adept in this discipline go, this article seeks to separate the wheat from the chaff. This article was originally published in FMQ 1/2003.