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Improvisation

IAM

IAM is an acronym for "Improvised Art Music", but there's a bit of double entendre in the name too, as the phrase "I am" embodies the notion of living in the moment. Writing scads of rational, often prosaic "music for use" (i.e. commercial music) in total isolation eventually drove me to this idea: a synthesizer band (configured like the Philip Glass Ensemble or (David Borden's) Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company) that improvises communally - and, ideally, without genre boundaries or limitations. I was very fortunate to meet an excellent composer and keyboard performer named Howard Patterson - simultaneously like-minded, and yet often complementary to my way of thinking. We had a very fruitful collaboration as IAM from 2008-2013. Initially, we concentrated on live performance exclusively. But after making a few recordings to assess our sound and our interaction, we came to realize that improvisation could also be used as a basis for more formal, polished work. So, the following pieces came about in various ways. Impossibly Slow Motion was recorded live in studio, with a thin layer of secondary overdubs. It was one of those special times when everything clicks, a story is told, magic flows, and that's that. Of course, any band with a hit single absolutely MUST make a music video (!)...so, here's ours.

Remembrance of Things that Never Were started as a live improvisation with MIDI capture. We made some trivial adjustments afterward, but, nonetheless, this was another fortunate occasion when we simultaneously "hit a zone", and sustained it for an extended period of time.

Revelations of Sunrise started with a wonderful pad from Howard. We both recall a strong feeling of "time suspended" while playing it initially. We added quite a few overdub layers afterward, and so the final result is complex and kalideoscopic. The title came about from our sense of the piece accompanying a sunrise scene, with the increasing light revealing more and more detail at various levels.

Autumn Leaves, Frozen in a Winter's Pond is yet one more example of a very poetic start from Howard - which resonated with me immediately - and then, off we went! I remain amazed at our sudden mutual / unanimous shift in direction for the last half of the piece - but then, when the communication was 'just right', such things happened...and they felt like transcendent experiences.

We have pages on ReverbNation, YouTube, eMusic, Amazon, and iTunes with more music and information. (But I recommend that you pass on all of those and, instead, join us on Spotify!)