Quotes on (free) improvisation

Group improvisational creativity is collaborative since no single participant

imposes an idea on the others. Any contribution for development of action may be
rejected by others or, even if accepted, can be perceived differently by different
participants and developed in a multitude of ways. Contrary to the general
assumption that it results from the successful leadership of a central controller,
group creativity is an emergent phenomenon. In the same way a flock of birds is
organized without a leader, a group can work as a creative functional unit without
any kind of centralised decision making. In that situation, interactional dynamics
between group members can create a state group flow the final creative product
of which transcends the sum of individual contributions (Sawyer, 2006: 148). How
do individuals relate to the group? How do individual parts relate to the group
product? What kinds of group process are distinguishable? Creative process in free
improvisation can be initiated by the individual but is most often carried out by
the group.
As stated by improviser Ann Farber: Our aim is to play together with the greatest
possible freedom which, far from meaning without constraint, actually means to
play together with sufficient skill and communication to be able to select proper
constraints in the course of the piece, rather than being dependent on precisely
chosen ones"
[http://home.uevora.pt/~jmenezes/jmdissertation.pdf]

Pelz-Sherman (1998) [defines the genre] Western improvised contemporary art

music as one in which group improvisers make decisions about what to do at any
given moment based primarily on their own imagination and interpretation of
signals from the others (p. 5) and wherein preestablished referents are kept to a
bare minimum.
[http://sites.northwestern.edu/cseme/files/2015/04/Journal-of-Research-in-Music-
Education-2015-Hickey-425-45-1h4ehrv.pdf]

Nunn (1998: 37) identifies what he calls processes of linear content whose goal is
to create musical content as a single "voice and relational processes, which relate
identities within the group. These processes can generate situations of transition,
gestural continuity and segmental form from which stems form and narrative. These
processes can be subjected to simultaneity, hybridization, overlapping and
randomness, creating a musical environment of great complexity.
[http://home.uevora.pt/~jmenezes/jmdissertation.pdf]