‘Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom’, New Book by David Toop

It’s always a good day when you find out that David Toop has finished a new book, this time about one topic he has definitely tasted well: improvisation, called Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom

To be published in May 5 by Bloomsbury, the book aims to introduce “the philosophy and practice of improvisation (both musical and otherwise) within the historical context of the post-World War II era.” Such venture is shaped beyond any chronology, and dives feely into different tendencies, “from surrealist automatism to stream-of-consciousness in literature and vocalization; from the free music of Percy Grainger to the free improvising groups emerging out of the early 1960s (Group Ongaku, Nuova Consonanza, MEV, AMM, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble); and from free jazz to the strands of free improvisation that sought to distance itself from jazz.”