Improvisation, in music and elsewhere, has to do with precariousness, imperfection, indeterminacy, error, in other words, with things that - unexpected and not always welcome - are continually encountered in the course of existence. This is why improvisation is the practice that, while living, we most frequently encounter, often without even paying attention to it.

 

But improvisation also has to do with encounter, dialogue, creative collaboration. Because it is by meeting with others, by dialogue and cooperation that we are able to navigate the sea of precariousness and imperfection without harm, giving even indeterminacies and errors a form, managing to give them meaning.

 

 

This recording gives us proof of all this through sounds, showing us two masters of musical improvisation at work: the Danish guitarist Jørgen Teller and the Italian trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini. On the strength of an almost chance encounter, but immediately very fruitful, their vertigo voices dialogue for over an hour in freedom, responding sound by sound with the timbral expressiveness they urge each other to seek in their instruments. In doing so, they venture into an enthralling introspection, made up not only of organised notes, but also and above all of noises and mumbles, vibrations and whispers, pops and electroacoustic sounds, which are given shape as they go along, because in improvisation what counts is not the goal to be reached, but what is encountered along the way: Nothing is to be thrown away or left by the wayside; every acoustic suggestion must find its appropriate response; every sound, even the most improbable and random, must find its place in the plot under construction. Indeed, that is the beauty of it all: to be able to come up with, naturally and simply, a meaning and a form even for what does not seem to have any. Thus in music, as in life.

 

 

From this game with alea, conducted by both with intensity and at the same time with lightness, without disdaining 'dirty', informal or only apparently non-musical sounds, not only splendid sound situations arise - as happens in 'successful' improvisations - but even lyrical scenarios in their own way, as happens exemplarily in the two 'Vertigo' pieces that open and close the work, where the talkative dialogue between the two takes shape and relaxes, widens and becomes serene, until it becomes a true song.

 

And so all that remains is to listen carefully to these vertigo voices, concentrating on the subtle movements with which they intertwine to produce musical meaning and value. Enjoying their beauty, of course, but also trying to understand them in depth and learn how to take their dizzying skill with us outside the musical context.

 

Because improvisation is everywhere: improvisation is life.