Derek Bailey (guitarist)

He was a member of the Jazz Composer's Orchestra and formed the trio Iskra 1903 with double bassist Barry Guy and trombonist Paul Rutherford that was named after a newspaper published by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.

Derek Bailey (29 January 1930 – 25 December 2005) was an English avant-garde guitarist and an important figure in the free improvisation movement.

Bailey abandoned conventional performance techniques found in jazz, exploring atonality, noise, and whatever unusual sounds he could produce with the guitar.

Much of his work was released on his own label Incus Records.

In addition to solo work, Bailey collaborated frequently with other musicians and recorded with collectives such as Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Company.

Bailey was born in Sheffield, England.

A third-generation musician, he began playing guitar at the age of ten.

He studied with Sheffield City organist C. H. C. Biltcliffe, an experience he disliked, and with his uncle George Wing and John Duarte.

As an adult he worked as a guitarist and session musician in clubs, radio, and dance hall bands, playing with Morecambe and Wise, Gracie Fields, Bob Monkhouse, Kathy Kirby, and on the television program Opportunity Knocks.

Bailey's earliest foray into free improvisation was in 1953 with two guitarists in Glasgow.

He was part of a trio founded in 1963 with Tony Oxley and Gavin Bryars called Joseph Holbrooke, named after English composer Joseph Holbrooke, although the group never played his work.

The band played conventional jazz at first, but later moved in the direction of free jazz.

Throughout both his commercial and improvising careers, Bailey's principal guitar was a 1963 Gibson ES 175 model.

In 1966, Bailey moved to London.

At the Little Theatre Club run by drummer John Stevens, he met like-minded musicians such as saxophonist Evan Parker, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, and double bassist Dave Holland, with whom he formed the Spontaneous Music Ensemble.

In 1968 they recorded Karyobin for Island Records.

Bailey formed the Music Improvisation Company with Parker, percussionist Jamie Muir, and Hugh Davies on homemade electronics.

In 1970, Bailey founded the record label Incus with Tony Oxley, Evan Parker, and Michael Walters.

It was the first musician-owned independent label in the UK.

Although he occasionally made use of prepared guitar in the 1970s (he would, for example, put paper clips on the strings, wrap his instruments in chains, or add further strings to the guitar), often for Dadaist/theatrical effect, by the end of that decade he had, in his own words, "dumped" such methods.

Bailey argued that his approach to music-making was actually far more orthodox than that of performers such as Keith Rowe of the improvising collective AMM, who treats the guitar purely as a "sound source" rather than as a musical instrument.

Instead, Bailey preferred to "look for whatever 'effects' I might need through technique".

Eschewing labels such as "jazz" and "free jazz", Bailey described his music as "non-idiomatic".

In the second edition of his book Improvisation..., Bailey indicated that he felt that free improvisation was no longer "non-idiomatic" in his sense of the word, as it had become a recognizable genre and musical style itself.

Bailey frequently sought performance contexts that would provide new stimulations and challenge that would prove musically "interesting", as he often put it.

This led to work with collaborators such as Pat Metheny, John Zorn, Lee Konitz, David Sylvian, Cyro Baptista, Cecil Taylor, Keiji Haino, tap dancer Will Gaines, Drum 'n' Bass DJ Ninj, Susie Ibarra, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and the Japanese noise rock group Ruins.

Despite often performing and recording in a solo context, he was far more interested in the dynamics and challenges of working with other musicians, especially those who did not necessarily share his approach.

The band continued until 1971.

He was a member of Oxley's sextet until 1973.

With other musicians, Bailey was a co-founder in 1975 of Musics magazine, described as "an impromental experivisation arts magazine".

In 1976, Bailey started the collaborative project Company, which at various times included Han Bennink, Steve Beresford, Anthony Braxton, Buckethead, Eugene Chadbourne, Lol Coxhill, Johnny Dyani, Fred Frith, Tristan Honsinger, Henry Kaiser, Steve Lacy, Keshavan Maslak, Misha Mengelberg, Wadada Leo Smith, and John Zorn.

Oxley and Walters left early in the label's history; Parker and Bailey continued as co-directors until the mid-1980s, when friction between them led to Parker's departure.

In 1980, he wrote the book Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice.

In 1992, the book was adapted by Channel 4 in the UK into a four-part TV series, On the Edge: Improvisation in Music, which was narrated by Bailey.

Bailey organized the annual music festival Company Week, which lasted until 1994.

As he put it in a March 2002 article of Jazziz magazine:

"There has to be some degree, not just of unfamiliarity, but incompatibility [with a partner]. Otherwise, what are you improvising for? What are you improvising with or around? You've got to find somewhere where you can work. If there are no difficulties, it seems to me that there's pretty much no point in playing. I find that the things that excite me are trying to make something work. And when it does work, it's the most fantastic thing. Maybe the most obvious analogy would be the grit that produces the pearl in an oyster, or some shit like that."

Bailey continued the label with his partner Karen Brookman until his death in 2005.

Bailey died in London on Christmas Day in 2005.

He had been suffering from motor neurone disease.