Maybe the moral is to program musicians who can perform interesting free improvisations for longer than five minutes. No offense intended to any of the performers, I'm just drawing a different conclusion from your same complaint.

I absolutely agree with Keir, Robert.
It's, to say it very mildly, slightly curious to draw a conclusion like that based on one gig, by one specific group of performers...

Maybe I should have been more clear that this was not based upon this specific concert. After being around experimental improv for the last 5 years, and playing a lot of it myself, I strongly feel that *in general* the improv sessions I witness tend to be a lot less interesting when there is no structure whatsoever, whether as a principle or as an experiment. Again, there might be occasional great moments, and those sessions might be worthwhile just for those moments, but personally, and generalized, I believe in structure in improv. I guess this in the end boils down to a question like: is knowledge about another person, how he reacts on certain events, what personal structures he uses, necessary for interesting communication in music?

as i was on of the people involved in playing there i might add this; it was a big session with too much musicians who met eachother there for the first time . also MY feeling was that it wasn't really an interesting concert. this had nothing to do with playing improvised or with structures. lots of structured-stuff bores me to death as well, it's just to do with playing not so well, partly because we just sucked, and partly because it was all too polite because of the 'structure' (the context of playing) forced upon the musicians. anyway, it's a total different thing with Office-R (who didn't really played their best concert as well) who play together more or less a lot. in general i would say that if you improvise with 'new' people a group of 3 or maximum 4 would be much better.
and adding insult to injury ( (: ) i might say that OfficeR 'derived' from improvisation as well, it just added elements to it and developped into 'a' direction. and that's only good.
point being that your way of thinking is slightly pointless; improvisation is just a thing you can use, it's not a way of playing, for sure it is not a dead end, as you can end up anywhere you want, it's not a genre, it's not even a way of thinking.
so in general, even if you have seen loads of improv concerts, your assumption to 'keep away...etc' is as sane as saying 'keep away from people that play songs, i have only seen shit bands the last few years' , or anything else.

Hi Lucas,
I agree with you on the first part of your comment - including the fact that officeR did definitely not play its best concert ever. And yes, IF people decide to play improv with total strangers, then at least you should keep the group small. I think I also specified my post in my comment, that structure can sometimes help, but that it mainly is about knowing the other player, and knowing to a certain degree what to expect. You and Anne for example did have some nice moments in the described concert, I think due to the fact that you've played so often together. Also yes, OfficeR derived from improv, and so did my personal playing - I'm only stating that personally I'm bored with most free improv as experimentation between strangers. Maybe I should have stressed that this is really a personal viewpoint. And some remarks were maybe a little 'short through the corner', to quote a dutch saying ;))

ok, so we agree a bit too much,
well that happens.
still i'd like to state that playing with 'new' people has my interest besides playing with people you know (like in my case, Anne LaBerge) and with who you develop a 'language'.
it just proved itself over and over that playing a big 'improv' band with 'strangers' doesn't work. it's like with social interaction; the best way to meet somebody in general is to talk personally with them, not in the company of loads of other strangers.

not a big point made, but a simple truth that not everybody seems to know.