Here’s a great video (well, it’s a talking-head segment with great content), titled “Improvisation and Canon inWestern Music” in which musicologist Susan McClary discusses the decline of improvisation during the nineteenth century as the canon of “great works” grew. It’s from ArtistHouse Music, which turns out to have lot of improvisation videos (as well as [...]
I was delighted to see that today’s Wall Street Journal feature article on the return of improvisation to classical music performance and the training of classical musicians features what my DePauw University improvisation students are doing. Several photos of DePauw students in action, and video footage from DePauw, are included in the online version.
If you [...]
Those of us trained in the traditional, improvisation-phobic classical musical culture often don’t realize that improvisation played a key role in the way people made music, even much of what we now think of as classical music, through the nineteenth century. While most (but not all) of my own improvising is in non-performance situations, in [...]
An invitation to explore self-expressive “free” improvisation, in which, as we say in Music for People, “there are no wrong notes.” (I blogged about the comedy of errors I experiened making these videos here.) These videos are cross-posted with my other blog.
Priming the pump of the creative imagination by improvising just one note at a time.
Cresting an extended improvisation (longer than one note, anyway!), listening inside yourself for the first note, then the next and the next.
Recent Comments