Improvisation for Classical Musicians Eric Edberg’s commentary and resources for classicial musicians who improvise, or want to.

After a good bit of trial and error, I have finally managed to get video from my camcorder all the way to YouTube. Here’s the first part (2 more to come) of the solo improvisation set I did at the University of Iowa School of Music Contemporary Improvisation Weekend two weeks ago (November 3). [...]

While we are all waiting for me to get my video loaded onto YouTube (I know you are probably losing sleep over it), here’s a very enjoyable cello/piano improv I just found there. The cellist is Greg Heffernan, working with his friend Kamel.

It’s interesting that many of the comments on YouTube are skeptical that [...]

I had an email earlier today from a new friend at the University of Iowa regarding recording improvisations and then discussing them. This is a great thing to do–if you are a teacher running an improv class, for a group to do themselves, and to do with your own solo improvisations. You can [...]

Shortly after I began improvising on my own, I discovered the recordings of David Darling. The simple yet beautiful solo improvisations on his Tao of Cello album were important and empowering to me: an improvisation based on a simple idea, not harmonically complex, not highly developed, could be beautiful and worthwhile and enjoyable to [...]

I’m at the University of Iowa this weekend, and have started blogging about it here.