ABSTRACT
The Instant Composers Pool was part of a broader movement of musicians in the 1960s who sought to assert their independence from American models. In contrast to many other European improvisers, however, the ICP seems to have always consciously occupied a position on the boundaries of jazz. This chapter briefly discusses the history of jazz in the Netherlands, before describing the complex encounters and connections with other European improvisers as well as the American avant-garde. It shows that the description of the European “emancipation” as a radical break, either from American examples or from previous European jazz, at least in the case of the ICP, diminishes important forms of continuity across these different genres. It describes the fraught relation between American and European improvisation as a complex and multifaceted one, in which there was frequent interaction, dialogue, and mutual understanding and sympathy, but also disagreement, misunderstandings, and incommensurability of artistic and political motives. It concludes that the ICP’s ironic and ambivalent relation to jazz continues to inform their approach to improvisation.
