F So. You got your degree in composition at the University of Montreal...
R I studied composition at the University of Montreal between 1972 and '75...
F But you had started working on a version of the game in '71
R My games were created...
F Before your degree
R Before my degree
F Wait a sec...
R But I'd say, um... yeah, before my degree.
F How did it come to you?
R I think that the very first game I put together was DEUX COUPS and it came to me from the process of improvisation itself, it's... I was looking for systematic, um, ways, concepts that would be very... that would be purely improvised. Meaning that when you play jazz, you're playing with harmonic progressions, you're playing with melodies, you're working from a specific material, and you also play with a certain language that you can recognize and call jazz. And at that point in time, I... I was already very interested in improvisation, in jazz, but I was interested in, I was wondering, is there a way to improvise on other things than on the conventional language of jazz. From there I started looking for other colors, I started listening to contemporary music, and in those days it was Messiaen, Xénakis, Stockhausen... and I got interested in, rather than writing themes on sheet music and all that, finding what is very specific to improvisation, that is to say, the possibility of reacting, in real time, to a musical proposition. That's what fascinated me, and it's still what I'm interested in today; when I put together little games, I don't want to force people to do something in a specific time frame, I'd rather make them respond to something that is developing, growing in time. So you don't have a score that tells you, "Whup, you gotta slide in there", but a "score" that dictates, "react to this one", "react to that", "react in such a way", which forces you to be in the flow of music. All my games come from this idea of making musicians understand and acknowledge that they must react to each other, because that's the very essence of collective improvisation.
F Collective, because solo improvisation is what
R It's something else entirely... Solo improvisation is being by yourself with yourself, so, um... Yet at the same time, yet even then you can play games with yourself, you can say, "well, Ima do a first one, and then well, I take only the middle of what I just did, and I keep the beginning and the end and I'll develop them later", you're always reflecting on what you can possibly do, and your performance develops along these lines.
