Glasgow-based Canadian composer, artist, and writer, Josh Thorpe likes to listen to unusual music, and to talk with interesting people about it. In this episode, Doug Tielli discusses what improvisation is, some varieties of improvisational experience, what giving more time and space to making things is like, the easiest way to make something you like, aiming for things and not getting them and being interested anyway, difference tones, spring peepers, and what music is for.
They also discuss lying on the floor listening to CDs, how Paul Bley is like Neil Young, the static world some improvisers like to create (and how that can be more nicely mushy), and how frogs seem l like they’re in your head. Listening includes Carla Bley via Paul Bley, Gilius van Bergeijk, and Maarten Altena.
Artist Bio
Doug Tielli
Doug Tielli has been a fixture of Southern Ontario’s music community as a multi-instrumentalist improviser, songwriter, and composer in a variety of ensembles such as The silt, Drumheller, and The Reveries. His work freely spans folk, pop, jazz and experimental music and he has performed and recorded with the likes of Marshall Allen, Owen Pallett, Amy Millan, John Oswald, Evan Parker, The Constantines, Baby Dee, Devon Sproule, and has had chamber works performed by Arraymusic, Contact Contemporary Music and Neither/Nor. Listen to more at https://dougtiellimusic.bandcamp.com/.
Notes on the musicians we listened to: Carla Bley developed from a small‑group composer into one of the most singular jazz writers of the last half‑century.
Paul Bley, a pivotal pianist of the free‑jazz era, broadened the piano’s role in improvised music through his highly idiosyncratic, spacious explorations.
Gilius van Bergeijk, a key Dutch proponent of conceptual music, stretched the range of both instrumental and electronic practice by deconstructing familiar works through analogue splicing and collage—works such as BAC, Symphony of a 1000 (Alphabetically) and Over de dood en de tijd.
Maarten Altena, moving from contrabassist and free improviser to independent composer and ensemble leader, used the Maarten Altena Ensemble and later freelance commissions to merge chamber‑like scoring with jazz and improvisation.