Old questions, new again

This blog has been sorely neglected for the past month or so – too many gigs to play, and grants to write!  But now I’m back, and I promise to be here regularly for the next cycle (and yes, to get to compiling that list of improvisation related links I’ve been promising!).

I was on a panel during Jazz Week in Boston, called On the Edge: Exploring the Creative Music Scene with Dave Bryant, John Kordalewski, and Neil Leonard.  I did a short lecture and audience participation session about improvisation.  Afterwards, I was taking questions, and someone asked me “How do I practice getting better at Improvisation, not improvising on my instrument, but improvisation itself.”

I didn’t have a very good answer to that question.  Thinking about it, and talking about it with other improvisers created other questions (which I also don’t have good answers for) and it all kind of cascaded into a wonderful confirmation of the direction my inquiries about improvisation have been and should be heading.  What a gift! 

I know the process of improvisation is engaged whenever we create something, but what is that process?  How do we engage it?  What about it stays the same, no matter what we are creating?  What changes?  What are the core principles, and how can one communicate them to others in a way that facilitates their personal connection to improvisational creativity, no matter what it is they are doing? 

Book number two in there somewhere, but there’s lots of research and cross discipline improv work to be done before then!  I’ll keep you posted...

Not alone Part 2

While I was writing my last blog “We Are Not Alone” there was still a tiny voice inside,  whispering that I was overstating my case, (and rationalizing that the overstatement was for a good cause).  After a couple of weeks of google searches and link clicking, that voice has been stilled.  The Age of Improvisation is well underway.  Not only are we not alone, it's getting positively crowded out here in the improv universe.  

I was going to write a quick series of blogs about how people are researching, writing about, talking about, exploring, and practicing improvisation, with lots of examples, but I have found out I was hopelessly optimistic. There is SO MUCH out there that it’s not going to be quick.  But I promise you I will keep doing it, and sharing what I find with you in the links section of my website, and on this blog.

I love seeing all these people doing research into every little aspect of improvisation.  I love reading about all the different ways people are thinking about improvisation and researching it.  A mere 30 years ago, I could hardly get anyone to talk to me seriously about improvisation as a subject of practice and serious study, so every one of these papers and research projects seems precious, and I find myself wishing I could be involved with each one.

But the fact is, I’m a nuts and bolts kind of researcher, a get your hands dirty improviser, and I really belong on the front lines, where people are actively improvising and figuring out how to improvise.  My book is not called “A Practical Guide” for nothing.  My real love and talent is in figuring out how all this academic stuff translates into real world improvising, and how to communicate that knowledge and insight with other improvisers, in language we can all use and understand.

Just to give you a taste of how much improv stuff is out there, here’s a quick couple of links - much more to come!

If you're looking for written materials, here's a good place to start - Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen’s  annotated bibliography of  Experimental  Improvisation Practice and Notation references over 650 writings from 1949 to the present.

 Wanta play Games?  The Improv Encyclopedia has tons of neatly categorized games from the improv comedy realm.

How about improvisation as "a crucial model for political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action"? See the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice research project.

Scientists are researching how improvisation effects the brain. See a fun Ted Talk about the study called  "Your Brain on Improv", or read  the full research article Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance

Improvisation is truly everywhere. I've seen articles, blogs, and books on improvisation from the viewpoint of business and business management, therapies of all kinds, engineering, the practice of law, decorating, philosophy, cooking, and just plain living a better and happier life.

Along with my usual musings and articles about group improvisation, I'll be sharing some of my favorites with you in coming blog postings!

We Are Not Alone

Improvising musicians often think of themselves as a lonely, unpopular, and misunderstood minority, who have little hope of ever being understood and appreciated.  We each sit on our own little creative island, bemoaning our fate as cultural castaways.  

At one time, there may have been some truth to this attitude, but now it couldn’t be farther from the truth. We are now at the point where improvisers need to acknowledge that we are no longer on the fringes of society. We are smack dab in the middle of it.  

For the first time since the invention of the printing press, the way we acquire and transmit information and knowledge has fundamentally changed, and this has sparked a fundamental change in the way that people process and utilize information.  As a result, people everywhere are turning to improvisation as a vital and inescapable part of the answer to the questions posed by digital media and information technology.   We are entering the Age of Improvisation.

What does that mean for us improvising musicians?  It means we have to stop thinking about what we do as some weird thing that nobody except for the other people who do this same kind of weird thing are interested in.  It means that there is longer any excuse for pretending what we do is exclusive, and every reason to make what we do as inclusive as we can – to welcome and encourage everyone to take an interest in and to participate in this glorious process of improvisation.  It means we have to accept that we are the repositories of a vast amount of knowledge about the process of improvisation, knowledge that is direly needed and sought by many people.

Over the next month, I'll be writing about some of the many ways that improvisation is being used, and places where talk about improvisation is showing up.  I'll be adding links to my webpage, and a blogroll of improvisational allies.  It's all connecting up, and improvisation is at the heart of it. 

We are not alone.