about us

The Minneapolis Free Music Society is a improvisational music collective consisting of about 25 local musicians. While the Society performs non-idiomatic music, the terms "Free Jazz" and "Free Improvisation" are not entirely inappropriate. The instrumentation varies from performance to performance. The Society typically performs in rotating quartet and quintet configurations, though there have been duet and octet performances. The music is never written, rehearsed or otherwise preconceived. The members of the Society play living music that is subject to, and informed by, the immediate environment. There are no soloists, and no accompanists. The music is performed on an intuitive level with a high degree of awareness. Musical "conversations" develop within each improvisation.

The Minneapolis Free Music Society (MFMS) is part of a long tradition of experimental improvised music collectives. We draw aesthetic influences from a long list of groups including the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the London Musicians' Collective, the Jazz Composers Guild, and Sun Ra's Arkestra. As with these collectives, we seek to work together to help promote the creative projects of our members.

It is our belief that the process of collaboration provides important moments of cross-fertilization that enrich our individual creative paths. Our own paths to free improvisation are varied. Some of us have studied music composition and performance in school, while others learned through playing and making music. Members of MFMS have backgrounds in philosophy, sound engineering, and painting, to name but a few. We have all been drawn towards free improvisation from many different directions and, perhaps not surprisingly, we all remain involved in creating different styles of music including: rock, punk, electronic, folk, avant-garde, jazz, hip-hop, noise, and North Indian classical music. These influences benefit our art and help to shape the kinds of work that we produce together.

We use to the term experimental because we wish to create works of art that take risks, ask questions, and challenge existing ideas about use and purpose of music. It is our mission to create new musical worlds that can challenge and confront the old, while also acknowledge the musical traditions from which we have emerged. In addition, MFMS seeks to include a variety of other artistic disciplines within our performances, including: visual arts, poetry, and dance. The cold north, which is our home, is known for its' collectivist leanings. The winters here force people to band together in a way not found in warmer climates. We accept this sense of community and strive to make music that represents the best of the Minneapolis music scene.