CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 18

Easy day at the University of Louisville. I coach the improvisation class for an hour in the afternoon and am taken to dinner by my hosts Krzysztof Wolek and Allison Ogden. (With very low expectations, we go to a tapas restaurant called "Mojito" that turns out to be excellent. We agree that the flan made with goat milk, with dulce de leche ice cream, is out of this world.) The rest from performing is probably useful but, tired as I am, by evening I would certainly rather rally and perform tonight. I am so home on this tour and dislike the idea of it ending, which it will, and soon.

At the improv class we have perhaps ten students on various instruments. Playing technique and improvisation capabilities vary within the group, but everyone is there because they want to be. We start with a listening excercise that I have written into a pair of pieces (Quiet System and Places, or: The Hague Invasion Act). We play three or four improvisations -- I try not to talk too much, and keep the focus on playing -- and start each one with this excercise. It uses the individual players' inhale/exhale cycle, regardless of instrument, to determine individual rhythms and thus the rhythmic cadence of the entire improvised statement. But listening is the bottom line in improvisation, in the improvisation that I am interested in making and discussing, so with each take we pull further away from "the rules" and rely more on interacting spontaneously. The idea of contemporaneous solo improvisations is not all that interesting to me, nor is the idea of improvisation as fundamentally a cathartic experience for the player(s). I favor rigor, structure, deliberate interaction. Call me conservative.

After the class I am the recipient, over coffee with a new friend in Louisville, of a recording by the proto-punk band Wire. So, so good. New obsession.