FRED ANDERSON

There comes a time for every musician who chooses music as their lifelong pursuit, a dream of reaching that creative place beyond the notes of a score, beyond the world of academics, and beyond the reach of the instrument they play. It's a mysterious place that can elude even the world's greatest musicians, is rarely discussed, and is even more difficult to explain. It provides more questions than answers, and those that create from it are few. Chicago composer and saxophonist Fred Anderson is one of those few.

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What is music?

Music is life and is bigger than all of us. We need to nurture it, keep the spirit going and, like anything artistic in life, it needs to be preserved. And it's difficult to put into words because each person interprets what it means according to how they feel at that particular time in their life. Some people experience it over and over and some people experience it for the first time. It's our existence but you have to listen to hear the story. It's your understanding of yourself and a language that you can learn to speak. When you are faced with difficulty, it can provide you with peace but trying to explain it is another thing completely. It provides a forecast for what's going on at that time. And it's like this life. You don't know when you are going to leave or how long you are going to stay and then all of a sudden it's over. It is a mystery that is unexplainable and is its greatness. Music will always be.

DEREK BAILEY

Guitarist Derek Bailey died on Christmas Day, 2005. Sadly, his passing has barely been acknowledged and continues to bum at my frustration and need for publishing this work. In a world where individual voices are usually scorned, Derek Bailey stood alone, secure in his accomplishments without concern for what lesser minds may have thought. Creating a musical language through his own unique and eccentric intellect, Bailey influenced several generations of improvisational musicians of every instrument.

Born in Sheffield, England, in 1930, Bailey, along with Evan Parker and Tony Oxley, established Incus Records in 1970. In 1976, he formed the group Company, which drew from the talents of various cultures of Africa, North and South America, Japan, and Europe, and in 1980 he published the very important and influential book Improvisation.

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You have said that the two most stimulating things in playing are indifference and unfamiliarity.

Yeah, that's right. When putting them together. And it's strange how stimulating indifference is. I have always noticed that the best groups are the ones with people who are not the same, who don't have too much in common. They have some things in common but perhaps the main characteristics were how they worked with each other personally. And quite often, their musical outlook is quite different and that can really produce all kinds of things and I have seen that over and over again. The first two people I played with in this kind of music were Tony Oxley and Gavin Bryars. Both are composers but nobody would put on a concert of their two compositions unless they were being provocative. They write two different types of music though they play together beautifully and they are different kinds of people but that was about the most satisfying group I have ever played with. We were all completely different. I was older than them and I had a different background but we were all different. And I think that is fruitful. I think compatibility in this area of music is completely overvalued.

Do women and men create differently?

I think there is a difference but I wouldn't want to try and describe it because I don't know what it is. I know that it is much better to have both women and men included together within a large ensemble. And because it is better socially, it creates a much better atmosphere for making music. But then again, it's not as simple as more aggressive approaches or anything like that. For instance, there is not a more forthright bass player than Joelle Leandre. She's a terrifically strong player so it's not as simple as breaking it down into obvious masculine and feminine clichés.

The impression I get from reading previous interviews is that you like diversity within ensembles in what it can create and how you can interact within that.

One of the people that I work intimately with is Min Xiao-Fen, who is a Chinese lady that plays the pipa, which is a Chinese flute. She is a remarkable player and until two or three years ago, I don't think she was very involved with full-scale improvisation. And one of the attractions of playing music for me is to play with different people and within their own context if I can.

I have found that the idea of regularly playing with the same people is not for me. I have done it for up to about eighteen months and that's about the maximum for me. And I think these thirty-five-year-long associations would drive me nuts. I tend to like ad-hoc situations where you get three or four people that have never played before. The best situation is what I have tried to describe as semi-ad hoc, which is somewhere between the immediate introduction to fresh playing and the later stage or just before it turns into a band. So there is a period, which can be as short as four or five days or as long as three months. There is a period of mutual exploration, and I don't mean that that's the total thing with the music but that's a strong element in it. When that's over, I think the music loses something. But you also gain the advantage of being a regular group and maybe a more presentable music, but that's not exactly what I'm into.

What about situations where you play with musicians for a period of time, move on to different directions with other players, and then get back together again?

Nowadays, it seems that everybody plays with anybody, or anybody plays with everybody. I find that the musical relationship I have with Susie...