Lincoln Improvisation Ensemble Receives Rude Reception

In my interview with Randall Snyder, he said:

We played one performance at an arts fair, and a couple people complained about the noise. This was an indoor amphitheater, it sat about 2,000 people. They came and told us we had to stop. Some of my students were there, and they complained about this, so they wrote letters to the editor, and it became sort of a cause celebre for a while.

I was able to find a letter to the editor of the Lincoln Star that describes this incident, and a follow-up from the paper which give more details. Enjoy!

Musical guest group offered little courtesy

Rude reception

The Lincoln Star, 5 May 1978 Page 4

Lincoln, Neb.

On Saturday, April 22, we witnessed an event that any proponent of freedom of expression would have found appalling.

The Lincoln Improvisation Ensemble, who had been invited as guest performers, were scheduled to play at 4:30 p.m. The program, however, was running behind schedule and the group did not ascend the stage until approximately 5:10 p.m. No sooner had they announced the first number and begun to play than a representative of the Arts Festival intervened.

The Lincoln Improvisation Ensemble, Feb 1975

Judging from the clearly audible comments shared between the official and the ensemble members, he apparently asked them to play some "real music." He asked if they would lower the volume on their instruments because they were "scaring away the customers," and then stated to the audience that "some people were wondering when they were going to stop tuning up."

He then inquired: "Who wants to listen to this?" Ignoring the enthusiastic affirmative response of the 25 to 30 people who had gathered to listen, he asked the remaining performers to leave (two performers were so insulted, they had already departed).

The L.I.E. was invited to play at the festival on a no-fee basis -- they did not ask to come. As guest performers, they should have been accorded the respect due any guest. The 25 to 30 members of the listening audience should have been accorded the respect due any patron. Basic social graces and humane consideration seemed to be lacking. Regardless of whether the Arts Festival personnel knew of the L.I.E.'s musical style (and they should have), the moment of the performance is not the time to decide if the band should be perform. Rather, it would seem to the average person that this issue should have been decided prior to the invitation.

What happened to the Lincoln Improvisation Ensemble is akin to the initial rejection of the then-progressive musical styles of Louis Armstrong and the Hot Fives in the 1920's. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in the 1940's, as well as John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk in the 1960's created music in the face of such rejection. Their music is now acclaimed as classic or modern jazz. This phenomenon is not peculiar to jazz music, but may also be found in philosophy, literature and painting. Throughout history, people have consistently resisted any new idea that seemed to be a radical departure from tradition.

An arts festival is traditionally a vehicle which provides for the cultural exchange of conventional and unconventional art forms between the patron and the artist. Lincoln should consider itself fortunate to include the Lincoln Improvisation Ensemble as members of its artistic community. Freedom to express that creativity is a necessary prerequisite to its continued growth.

ROBIN BUCHMAN
DAVE SKOW
BARB STIMSON

This letter was printed 11 May, 1978 by the Lincoln Journal. Ten days later, a response came:

 

Quartet or ensemble? Music or noise?

by Helen Haggie

Illustrator - Karen Blassen

An incident of April 22 at the Festival of the Arts sponsored by the Lincoln Community Arts Council seems to have been blown out of proportion as the result of letters to editors of Lincoln newspapers.

The incident centered on the volume of music made by the Lincoln Improvisation Ensemble at the festival, and the circumstances surrounding the group's departure from Pershing Auditorium during the festival.

The letter writers claimed that a festival official told the musicians they were "scaring away customers["], asked them to play "real music" and to "lower the volume." The letter writers quoted the official as asking, "Who wants to listen to this?"

The letter writers asserted that 25 to 30 people had gathered to listen to the ensemble but that the official finally asked all of the musicians to leave after two of them departed, feeling that they had been insulted although the ensemble was there by invitation of those who arranged the festival.

Arts Council President William Schlaebitz responded to a request for another side of the incident, saying that he went to the musicians with certain requests after noticing people "streaming out" of the auditorium and being approached by several artists who had displays in the arena. Several asked: "Can't you do something about all that noise?"

Schlaebitz said he found that [the] source of the "noise" was the Improvisation Ensemble, a group he described as 8 to 12 musicians on stage; Schlaebitz says he asked them to turn down the sound amplification, but this request did not get results "so I returned and I did ask them to leave."

He said this was to protect a "captive audience" in the auditorium from sound that was annoying many rather than entertaining.

Chairman Keith Heckman of the festival's performing arts program, said the invitation was for a quartet of  improvisers, not a large ensemble, and that group appearing "was much larger than I expected." He recalled that the entire festival was moved into the auditorium because of bad weather outside and speculated that the ensemble's music played outdoors would have made no problem because those who didn't like it could have moved on and still been in the festival area. "A lot of persons had to make concessions when it (the festival) was in the auditorium," Heckman added.

As for an assertion by the letter writers that the festival officials were, in effect, stifling innovative performing artists, Arts Council Director Sam Davidson said in response to a question that the festival never has been described as a haven for unconventional art. "Every new innovative art has its place, but it is hard to force it on the public in large doses," Davidson said.

Schlaebitz said he apologizes if the group and its admirers are unhappy, adding he wants no verbal shooting match over the incident.

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