Mixing the Immiscible: Improvisation within Fixed-Media Composition

This paper will explore ways in which mastered improvisation practice, with the studio as an instrument, is a proposed avenue to bridge the historical dichotomy between what Ted Gioia describe as ‘the aesthetics of perfection’ and ‘the aesthetics of imperfection’. It is proposed as a way to re-embody fixed music, as experimented by the author through the composition of his last fixed-media work. This will be put in the context of a wider trend observed amongst the current emerging generation of composers interested in the aesthesics of the work, by opposition to the previous generations that placed the value of the work in its poietics. The vital and primal importance of practice outcome as practice-based research’s main document will also be advocated for, as these trends are happening in the laboratory of live music.