An Interview with the Berkeley Improvisation Ensemble

The Berkeley Improvisation Ensemble
(L to R) Robert Strizich, Allan Pollack, Evalyn Stanley, Jim Aron, Jim Moran.

The Berkeley Improvisation Ensemble, active between 1968 and 1971, is among the many groups I first learned about via the archives at newspapers.com. No recordings were available, and information elsewhere on the internet was scarce. So I reached out to Robert (Bob) Strizich, who was gracious enough to answer some of my questions. He also forwarded my questions to Jim Aron and Evalyn Stanley, who gave their responses to several questions.

The BIE describe their music:

"The BIE is dedicated to the exploration of different techniques involving controlled improvisations. These techniques range anywhere from the performance of totally free pieces, where the control is provided by the individual improviser, to the performance of pieces where most of the sounds are precisely notated. Our main aim is to play music that is well-organized, coherent, and emotionally stimulating, yet still retaining the freedom and excitement that is inherent [in the music of improvisation]."

After striking up a correspondence, I learned that a 2-CD set of live recordings was released in 2019. It is available from Jim Aron, and can also be heard via YouTube.

How did the BIE first come together? Can you describe some of the first times you played together?

Bob: We came together by means of a rather complex network of interpersonal relationships!

Jim Aron and Jim Moran already knew each other from high school in South San Francisco;  Moran was attending San Francisco State College (SFSC; now San Francisco State University), and Aron was at the University of California Berkeley (UCB).  

South Bend Tribune, 5 March 1967 (p. 25)

Allan Pollack and I were also undergrads in music at UC Berkeley.  I had been playing in a UCB jazz quintet that included vibraphonist Lee Schipper and saxophonist Bob Claire.  Allan and Bob Claire had attended the same high school in Chicago and were friends, and so I ended up meeting Allan through Bob.  Allan and I became good friends, and we began thinking about starting a group that would explore non-jazz free improvisation.  

Allan knew Aron from a jazz band at UCB in which they both had played.  Allan subsequently invited Aron to join us, who in turn suggested his friend Moran as a fourth member.  Early on, Jim Aron was an engineering major at UCB, but soon switched his major to music.

The first several times we played together, the musical experiences were very powerful and really "blew our minds."  These early improv sessions convinced us to continue and to become a formal ensemble.

What drew you to improvisation? How did your views change during the life of the BIE, and have they changed since?

Bob:  I was originally drawn to improvisation as a result of my early interest in jazz and my veneration of the great jazz virtuosos whose playing I admired.  But when I first heard "free jazz" and then became engrossed in free improvisation myself, I began to realize that the term "improvisation" comprised a much larger musical terrain than just the jazz idiom.  As wonderful as jazz was, I saw that improvisation had much more to offer than just improvising in a steady tempo to fixed, cyclical chord changes.  In our work with the BIE, I felt that we were expanding the boundaries of what improvising itself was, and could be, and were evolving an extemporized musical idiom analogous to that of the composed "avant-garde" new music that was then emerging.  Although I don't follow the current improv scene very much, it seems to me that improvisation is very much alive and well nowadays.  And thanks to the emergence of the digital era, players now have an array of interactive technologies at their disposal to augment their instrumental improvisations (I'm thinking here of artists ­like composer/trombonist George Lewis, who performs improvised "duets" with interactive software of his own design).

Composer / trombonist George Lewis.

Jim Aron: Our involvement with improvisation certainly had its roots in our jazz backgrounds and although our very first rehearsals (which, by the way, included bassist Peter Marshall) incorporated jazz elements, we soon made a very conscious effort to avoid jazz techniques and jazz tonality entirely.  This direction away from jazz continued throughout the group’s existence.  That being said, I never lost my love of jazz.  

What were some of the influences on your musical style and background?

Bob: Many diverse musical influences influenced and informed our performances and style of playing.

Of course, jazz was an initial inspiration for all of us.  We were certainly influenced in some ways by the more "mainstream" post-bebop musicians of the era (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, etc.) and also the more radical free-jazz players (such as Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, etc.)

But the cultural context of the SF Bay Area in the late 60s and early 70s played a large role too. This was, of course, a tumultuous and troubled ­– yet exciting and inspirational – time to be of that young age, studying and performing music in Berkeley (already a notoriously infamous city!) and in the wider Bay Area.  Our music was most certainly informed not only just by our jazz background and university training, but also by the alternative, radical, anti-establishment ferment of those years –  combined with the changing winds of the new music blowing in from New York and Europe.

As music undergrads, we were all acquainted – through our university music history classes – with the "atonal" and dodecaphonic works of Schönberg and Webern.  But more important, and much more influential on us, was hearing live performances of post-WWII new music not only at UCB, but also at various San Francisco venues, Mills College, and UC Davis.  We were exposed to seminal new works by Messiaen, Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, Xenakis, Penderecki, Cage, Feldman, Steve Reich and many more composers.  I also remember benefiting personally from visits and residencies of important composers such as Sessions, Dallapiccola and Messiaen (at UCB), Stockhausen (at Mills College) and Cage (at UC Davis).

All of the musical and cultural influences mentioned above were at work in our improvisational approach, characterized by a highly chromatic, freely 12-tone language at the service of an intense, dramatic – and often exuberant, even wild! –  musical expression.

On Discogs, I found a couple records of baroque music which you (Bob) recorded. Do you see your interests in improvisation and baroque music as related?

Bob: Yes.  Around the time that the BIE disbanded, I was becoming very involved with early music.  I eventually studied lute and baroque guitar at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, and subsequently spent a decade or more performing and recording renaissance and baroque music.  My experiences with jazz and the BIE definitely prepared me for the extemporaneous aspects of early music (such as ornamentation and the realization of basso continuo accompaniments).  And there was certainly a loose correspondence between our work in the BIE and the performance practice of early music:  like our BIE "scores," renaissance and baroque notation was not necessarily definitive, but was often a rough outline of melodic/harmonic content, the details of which would be filled in by the players at the moment of performance. 

Jim Aron: I was also involved in both renaissance and baroque performance technique, studying and performing on natural trumpet with harpsichordist Alan Curtis.  I also performed on soprano and alto sackbut, krummhorn and recorders with the Consortium Antiquum.

Who were some of the faculty members that you worked with, and did they encourage your pursuit of improvisation?

Bob: I studied with various composers at UCB, including Joaquin Nin-Culmell, Richard Felciano, Andrew Imbrie and Roger Sessions.  Another important influence for me was harpsichordist Alan Curtis, who was very supportive of my growing interest in early music.  These professors were generally encouraging of the work of the BIE, but only indirectly.  At that time, there was no support for jazz in the UCB music department, and the music that we were creating was considered to be some sort of jazz spinoff.  

In spite of our somewhat "alternative" status in the UCB Music Department, we were nevertheless quite active in the department and played frequent Noon Concerts (a weekly concert series on the campus sponsored by the music department).  From these performances, we became quite well-known (perhaps infamous?) in the department, so much so that we were dubbed by some of the more staid students "The Beatles of New Music!"

Other than Jim Moran, Allan Pollack, Jim Aron, and yourself (Bob), were there more members of the BIE? Did you have any other collaborators who played with you from time to time?

Bob and Evalyn: After the four of us had been playing for a while, we decided to do more theatrical work.  Evalyn Stanley had been a friend of Lee Schipper, and we got to know her through our jazz connections to Lee. After we saw her in a University production of Boris Vian’s “The Empire Builders," we invited her to join the group.  

Evalyn was an undergrad in Dramatic Arts at UCB and member of the Magic Theatre, a young theater group in the East Bay.  The Magic Theatre (MT) is now a well-known mainstay in the San Francisco theater scene, but at that time was in its infancy.  

The Magic Theater, San Francisco.

Our first collaboration with the Magic Theatre was “Ubu Roi” by Alfred Jarry, directed by John Lion.  Later on, in addition to Evalyn, we also collaborated with other actors from the Magic Theatre. When we began collaborating with the MT, the troupe had already mounted several controversial plays by San Francisco beat poet Michael McClure. We performed in McClure's play “The Cherub,” and also accompanied dramatic readings of selections from his “Meat Poems.”   

At some point, Jim Aron had suggested trombonist Johannes Mager as a possible collaborator.  Johannes was a very talented improviser at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) whom Jim knew through his brass players' connections, and we invited Johannes to share at least one concert with us.

One article mentions that the group explored "different techniques involving controlled improvisation". Another describes "rudimentary outlines, which the players then filled in". Did the Ensemble perform improvisations, scores, or a combination of both?

Bob: The only formal score that I recall was the score for my fairly long Improvisation for Electric Guitar, which contained specific timings, rhythms and pitches in addition to graphic notation. 

However, all of us contributed many verbal and/or graphic scores of various types, most of which were really rough "road maps" for controlled improvisation.  These scores were mainly used at the beginning of the three-year life of the ensemble, whereas towards the end of that period we tended to perform totally free improvs:   completely improvised, with no pre-planning at all.  Many of these were also quite long-lasting – often 30 minutes or more.   We considered these later lengthy improvisations to have been some our very best work.

Did the members of the Ensemble view improvisation and composition as different? How so?

Bob: I think that improvisation and composition were very much linked with one another for us.  Our main focus was chiefly improv itself, and for the most part, written "compositions" were just ways of guiding, or loosely controlling, the experience of improvisation.

The pieces we did with Evalyn were a possible exception.  Since these involved fixed texts and a member who was not a musician, the scores to these were more specific:  5 Poems by Stephan Crane, Potpourri, 4 Poems by e. e. cummings, and Cantata in a Forgotten Language.

Did the Ensemble rehearse? How often? What did you work on during rehearsals?

Bob: Yes, we did rehearse.  At one point, we actually lived together for a year in a large rented house in Oakland, and during this time we rehearsed with some regularity, especially when we were preparing for performances with the Magic Theatre.

After we moved out of the Oakland house, we probably rehearsed less, especially towards the end of the life of the ensemble, when we were mainly performing totally free improvisations.  

When we did rehearse pieces that were pre-planned or that used a "score," I think that rehearsals focused mainly on internalizing the overall formal shape, developing appropriate musical materials, and refining the proportions and timing of sections.

Some of the group's performances were accompaniments to dance, poetry, and theater. Did you view the BIE's activities as specifically musical, or interdisciplinary?

Jim Aron: The BIE was certainly formed specifically as a musical endeavor, but which early on utilized poetry as a component to several of our pieces.  This led naturally to our serendipitous involvement with the Magic Theatre. 

Bob:  I would say that we viewed our activities as chiefly musical, especially when performing as a quartet or a quartet-plus-actress.  But for specifically theatrical occasions (like our performances with the Magic Theatre), we wholeheartedly embraced our role as collaborators in a basically interdisciplinary enterprise.

I've been able to find documentation on about 13 performances, dating from Oct. 1968 until Nov. 1971.  Was there a particular moment at which the BIE disbanded?

Bob and Jim Aron: Actually, we played what seemed like innumerable concerts:  performances at venues all over the Bay Area, including museums, churches, and college and university campuses;  a tour of University of California campuses all over the state, etc.

All of us were developing other musical and personal interests towards the end of the three-year life of the BIE, and we disbanded – quite amicably I might add – in late December of 1971.

Are there any recordings of the Ensemble? Were any commercially released?

Jim Aron: Although we did not commercially release any recordings while the ensemble was active, we have recently produced a two-CD set of recordings spanning nearly the entire life of the ensemble, which we would be happy to provide to you. These recordings include pieces from all of our KPFA recordings as well as excerpts from our Magic Theatre performances and a performance on KGO-TV (ABC).  

Do you still improvise?

Jim Aron: When the group disbanded in 1971, I continued this type of free improvisation, for a short time, with Johannes Mager and The Ghost Opera, a group originally formed at the SFCM under the guidance of Robert Moran amongst others.  My musical life for the next twenty-five years moved in quite a different direction, which included theatrical and comedic improvisation but not the free improvisation associated with the BIE.

Bob:  Yes, I do, but now in the context of my composing work.  When I'm working on a new piece, I often improvise – on guitar, keyboard or computer (usually running Max/MSP) – to focus and develop musical ideas.  Improvisation – often computer-assisted – has now become a compositional tool for me! 

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