Managing innovation and spurring team creativity while working under constraints are key ingredients for success in today’s industries. Surprisingly enough, there is an artistic domain in which such concerns are also paramount--jazz improvisation. While understanding how such multifarious collaborations can be encouraged and even nurtured is still a work in progress, this book offers some suggestions on how such endeavors can be approached and theorized, at least in the world of 20th century free jazz music.

This short but dense book consists of six parts. Part 1 introduces free jazz and shows how the form emerged with key transitional figures such as John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, and Bill Evans, who led the movement toward liberty of form and timbre in jazz music.

Part 2 focuses on pure free jazz pieces, as created by Sun Ra or the Art Ensemble of Chicago. From such pioneering efforts emerge the basic elements of what could be called the art of collaboration--a collaborative space, Csikszentmihalyi’s flow distributed among the musicians, and group communication through gestures. The purpose of the whole monograph is to elaborate on such concepts.

Part 3 looks at various collaborative spaces used by artists such as Ornette Coleman and Archie Shepp. Here, the notion of space goes beyond location to encompass tonality, structure, and timbre; consequently, closed, constraining mindsets can be opened and liberated.

Part 4 looks at the concept of gesture, from both philosophical (Chatelet and Merleau-Ponty) and mathematical (topology and category theory) perspectives. A natural parallel is sketched with modern dance, particularly in Rebecca Lanzier’s works.

Part 5 completes the description of the three bases of collaboration by presenting the theory of flow--the state of mind in which one is perfectly immersed in one’s activities and where time dissolves--and linking it with specific examples from Miles Davis’ performances and the authors’ personal experiences (featured in the book’s complementary CD). The monograph ends with a look at the future of free jazz and its possible role in understanding collaboration.

Based on a free jazz course taught at the University of Minnesota, this quite unique--and, admittedly, a bit wild at times--book goes beyond a simple presentation of the history and techniques of this particular music style. It formalizes processes that appear, on the surface, as not even amenable to theorization, such as group improvisation, freedom in music performance, and destruction of artistic form. It builds upon a vast corpus of knowledge, from philosophy to music, painting to religion, and physics to mathematics; along the way, readers will also encounter first species counterpoint, topos, algebraic topology, Escher’s drawings, Friedrich’s paintings, French theory of philosophy, neuroscience, and Buddhism. Yet, the authors manage to convey their ideas in a coherent and passionate manner. Of course, merely reading about music can be somewhat frustrating. Readers who do not have a significant collection of jazz recordings should peruse free (and legal) music streaming sites, such as deezer.com and YouTube.com, for extracts of the jazz music pieces mentioned in the book; without these, reading the book is much too dry and its practical impact is significantly lowered.

In summary, the suggested line of thought about the science of collaboration is obviously still undergoing work, and some issues are somewhat abstruse. Anyone interested in the emergence of collaboration, be it in musical, artistic, or innovative processes, will get something out of this book.