Bay Area Improv Scene

The Bay Area Improv Scene is a commonly used name for a loose association of musicians and composers centered in the San Francisco Bay Area who create a style of music that evolved largely from avant-garde jazz and modern classical music, with influences from other areas such as Electronic art music, Free improvisation, and Musique concrète. Other names of this scene tend to use phrases such as "Creative Music" to try to incorporate a wider focus than just the improvisational approach.

This scene is comparable to the New York Downtown Scene (which is most often associated with John Zorn) and historically both scenes date back to the same time period in the early 1960s. A listing of some people who have been associated with the scene can provide a sense of the range of the music: List of Bay Area Improv Scene bands and artists

While most practitioners of this music are consciously avoiding the restrictions of any one particular genre, some generalizations can be made:

This is a very instrumental music, showing its primary influences from the jazz and modern classical worlds: the most common instruments are horns, woodwinds, and strings. Guitars and percussion are also often used, though not usually in the rock n' roll style, and the use of electronics is very common. Vocals are somewhat rare, and recognizable lyrics are still rarer.

Many of the practitioners are formally trained musicians, capable of playing conventional music with relative ease. If they choose to play rougher, noisier sounds, it is almost always a matter of choice, not necessity.

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