Improvisation Chamber Ensemble; 9

The Wayne State University improvisation chamber ensemble was organized in 1966 by Dr. Ruth Wylie. The group was originally conceived as a teaching aid but soon it was receiving enthusiastic reactions from concert audiences during the past year Dr. Wiley's Chamber Ensemble has performed in several states and an entirely new idiom of musical performance has been developed by the performances still maintain their experimental character. Now here with tonight's programme of improvisation is Professor Ruth Wylie of Wayne State University. Thank you and good evening. Tonight we're going to try another experiment. To this extent we are going to do entirely free improvisations without any structural plans. The only thing that we have decided ahead of time is which instruments will be playing and approximately how long we want each one of the pieces to be to fit into the half hour programme and we have decided to begin with a trio which will feature the double

bass and a soloist to capacity and this will be accompanied by trumpet and flute in a much more supportive role of background chords and occasional little piece of duet with a double bass and so on. This is all we have to do to go on and you will hear now a free improvisation featuring the double bass played by Don Lewandowski myself on flute and Frank Buckles on trumpet. We have just finished a free improvisation featuring the double bass and

supported by the flute in trumpet. And now we are going to attempt a suite of three movements changing the instrumentation a little bit in each movement. And we have decided to begin with piano solo and we know this is a improvising situation we haven't had at all during this series of programs. I will be at the piano in this first movement and will provide sort of a prelude idea to the suite. The second movement will feature the flute John Raya will still be at the piano and trumpet in double bass and percussion will be in a sort of supportive performing a supportive function. This will be a slow movement and the final movement will feature the trumpet and will be a fast movement. The flute will not be playing in this movement it is just a losing battle in a fast loud movement for the flute to compete with the trunk but it adds nothing so we'll have no flute. In this last movement but the other instruments will

be playing and Jim Hart way will be doing the piano in the last movement where it will not. We will have a break between the movements but no talking or explanations so will will play with with just a brief pause between a three movement suite as I have just described it. Who. Were.

I am I

am. I am. We have just finished it a really improvised suite of three movements and now we're

going to try another experiment of sorts. We're going to do a piece involving the piano principly but. Also involving percussion instruments and one player who works inside of the piano on the strings and on the sounding board and so on making special percussion sounds in connection with the piano with self and in addition to the other percussion instruments. I will be playing the piano in this version. John will be if you'll forgive the expression working inside of the piano part way will be doing the other percussion instruments. They've even given me a mallet in case I want to hit something somewhere along the line too. So now we will do a free improvisation for piano percussion outside of the piano and percussion inside of the piano. On.

The phone. Nothing.

We have just finished a free improvisation of a rather experimental nature

which made use of a pianist a percussion player and a third player who produced percussive effects on the strings in the sounding board of the piano. We will now complete the program with another free improvisation. All the members of the group will be taking part this time Jim Hart way will be playing the piano and in trying to decide what we would play. We we had we decided we wanted it rather point a list take somewhat in the style of a band. But when we realized that most of a Barron's pieces were only 16 or 20 measures long we knew that we could never get five minutes of mileage out of it. So we decided that we would solve this problem by changing the emphasis of the instrumentation a little bit and we're going to start with the piano playing rather freely and trumpet double bass percussion and flute. Doing a point very point a list a background of isolated punctuating notes. Then we will go into a middle section where the solo instruments will become more melodic and the

piano will play point a list equally as support and background for it. And finally at the end we will go back to the original instrumental concept with the the flute trumpet double bass being pointless ticking the piano more melodic and chordal again. Needless to say you probably can see how this led us to conclude that this piece was something in the structure of a sandwich. Mr. Harkaway is the bread in the rest of us are the meat shall we say of the sandwich. Anyway we'll give it a try. Here it is. Why.

You're right. We have just completed our last free improvisation on this program. It

involved all of us and we were trying to be rather pointless Dick. We hope you'll be with us again next week at the same time when we'll have some new and different music for you to enjoy. That was Professor Ruth Wiley with the Wayne State University improvisation Chamber Ensemble. If you want information on this group and samples of the design plans for several of the improvisations send 15 cents in stamps to music. W d e t FM 5 0 3 5 Woodward Avenue Detroit 4 rate too old to. This program was produced for national educational radio by w d t FM Wayne State University Detroit. The engineers Charles Nairn and David Pierce producer are on hood. This is the national educational radio network.