Improv:21: Understanding Conduction: An Informance with Lawrence “Butch” Morris

Part lecture, part rehearsal, and part performance, this fascinating program provides a window into a system for the creation of improvised music by an ensemble or band, that it's designer, Lawrence "Butch" Morris, calls conduction. In his words conduction is: "A vocabulary of ideographic signs and gestures activated to modify or construct a real time musical arrangement of any notation or composition. Each sign and gesture transmits generative information and provides instantaneous possibilities for altering or initiating harmony, melody, rhythm, articulation, phrasing, or form." In practice it means Morris, a very accomplished cornet player and jazz musician in his own right, teaching a group of talented musicians to respond to a series of hand gestures that indicate changes in pitch, duration, dynamics, and other basic musical parameters, while always leaving the decision of what to play up to the individual instrumentalists. The result is an ensemble that makes music rather than si

Added 26 Mar 2026