Django's Improvisations

Luke A

Maybe this is a dumb question, but does anyone know if they are actually improvisations? They seem fairly well arranged, and, of course now you have people playing them note for note. Were they recorded on the spot, or did Django treat them like compositions?

MichaelHorowitz

I wrote about this in the Unaccompanied Django book. Some of the pieces like Improv#2 were definitely precompsoed. There are three takes and there are only small differences. The other pieces probably have some improv...I think the "improvisations" are rhapsodic pastiches of pre-composed ideas. so the whole pieces were probably not pre-composed, but the sections were and he rearranged them on the spot.

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