Jazz: ‘High Speed And Broadband Ready’
Dave first contribution to NPR’s A Blog Supreme was published this morning. Below is an excerpt. And here is a direct link to his post.
Jazz: ‘High Speed And Broadband Ready’
Last week I played one of your more curious gigs.
Across high speed internet, thanks to software developed by Chris Chafe at Stanford University, I improvised in real time with musicians in Banff, Canada; San Diego, Calif.; Troy, N.Y.; and Belfast, Northern Ireland. The other musicians, among them Mark Dresser, Michael Dessen, and Pauline Oliveros, were visible only by video iChat (miserably slow compared to the audio).
The remarkable thing was how effortless the improvisation felt. I have played many gigs standing right next to Mark Dresser, so there was instantly a familiar feeling. But I had never played with any of the other musicians. As soon as we were improvising, there were no barriers to the communication. The fluidity of improvisation and jazz makes it 100% ready for these 21st century technologies.
