A n a l y s e r l e s p r o c e s s u s d e c r é a t i o n m u s i c a l e Pras et al. Improvised meetings between New York and Kolkata - A collaborative analysis of a transcultural study. Amandine Pras 1 , Caroline Cance 2 , Gilles Cloiseau 2 1 The New School for Social Research (New York, NY, USA) 2 Laboratoire Ligérien de Linguistique (LLL), UMR 7270 - CNRS & Université d’Orléans (France) Following a cross-disciplinary approach, we will explore two different musical improvisation cultures, one issuing from the jazz tradition in the United States, the other from Northern Indian classical named Hindustani music. At the crossroads of ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cognitive linguistics, this trans-cultural study stems from an ethnographic project lead within the New York free improvisation scene, carried out through the analysis of interviews and listening sessions following studio and public performance recordings (Cance & Cloiseau, 2015 ; Pras, in revision). In January 2015, two of the most active musicians taking part in the ethnographic study, Jim Black, (drums), and Mickaël Attias (saxophone), improvised for the first time with two Indian masters, Subhajyoti Guha (tabla), and Sougata Roy Choudhurym (sarod), both accustomed to improvising in musical contexts outside the Hindustani tradition. The gatherings mainly aim at bringing under scrutiny how these outstanding improvisers adapt to a totally novel situation. The idea of bringing into contact both these improvisation cultures came from a personal observation of the first author—listening to 60s’ Afro-American free jazz and traditional Hindustani music provided her with a similar type of energy, which is part and parcel of both musical genres. Both genres have met several times in the past, with the famous example of John Coltrane who went to study in India towards the end of his life in order to stretch out the limits of his improvisations (Turner, 1975), and that of the sitar player Ravi Shankar who might have described jazz as a child’s game (quoted by Farrell, 2000, p.189), but whose collaborations with American musicians significantly influenced Hindustani musical traditions (Slawek, 1993). Our transcultural study was conducted in close collaboration with Jonathan and Andrew Kay, two Toronto born jazz saxophone players who have been living for eight years in Kolkota where they are the students of a Hindustani music guru. In the wake of John Coltrane, J. and A. Kay are searching for an improvised music that transcends tradition and culture. Before the joint improvised sessions, the first author carried out individual interviews with the two Indian masters to investigate their personal improvisation processes. Our interview guide was made up of questions quite similar to those used for the New York study, which enables us to compare the answers on both musicological and linguistic grounds. However, on consulting J. and A. Kay, some terms were adapted so that our questions might take into account the specificity of local improvisation tradition. The questions go over the earliest improvisation experiences, the current motivations of the musicians to keep on playing, and how their improvisation might be tied to their personal lives. « Improvised meetings » consisted of four duos each of which brought together an Indian and a New York musician, followed by a quatuor session and a quatuor concert. The experimental procedure for duos—an alternation of improvisation, listening and individual and collective