The composer and musician Tyshawn Sorey said in 2017 that "the idea of what is
composed and what is improvised is pointless." We might follow this statement
back to his time spent at Wesleyan University with Anthony Braxton, and back
further still to Braxton's involvement in the early years of the Association for
the Advancement of Creative Musicians in Chicago, which according to its charter
was (and is) dedicated "to nurturing, performing, and recording serious,
original music". So we'll think about it's founder Muhal Richard Abrams, and so
about his instrument the piano. We'll focus on the years immediately following
the founding of that group, the 1970s, and we'll hear music across the spectrum
of recognizably composed and recognizably improvised.
