ImprovLive 365: First 10 episodes

We've had a great launch of ImprovLive 365!  Here's a synopsis of the first 10 episodes of ImprovLive 365 (including a preview of tomorrow's episode "Just Say Yes!") .  You can see them all at www.improvlive365.com

Episode 1: Welcome

In this episode,  creator and host of Improvlive 365  Tom Hall welcomes you to the daily webseries and tells you a little about what you can expect to see over the coming year.

Episode 2: Happy Accidents

The first in a series of interviews with painter, printmaker and public artist Jane Goldman.

Episode 3: Cubicles

Because people aren't content to merely inhabit places. We need to make them ours.

Episode 4: Mexican Christmas

A beautiful improvised duet from Kevin Barry on guitar, and Marty Ballou on bass.

Episode 5: Wildwood Flower

In the first of a series of interviews with bassist Marty Ballou, he talks his earliest musical memories and plays a solo version of Wildwood Flower.

Episode 6: The Secret of Improvisation

Shhhhhh.  It’s a secret!

Episode 7: Spontaneous Communication

An inside look at the magic behind the music of Mike Rivard and Club d'Elf.

Episode 8:  Playing who You Are

Guitarist Kevin Barry’s first ImprovLive 365 interview talks about his relationship to music, and the importance of honesty.

Episode 9:  It’s in There!

ImprovLive 365 visits Ron Ancone, who talks about his experience as Credit Manager, and his journey towards a greater understanding of personal creativity

Episode 10: Just say Yes

A review of Patricia Ryan Madson’s book Improv Wisdom and the importance of saying “Yes”.

Improvlive 365 is live!

Starting January 1, 2012 I have embarked on a year of exploring, documenting, and sharing the improvisational, spontaneous creativity of life, on my new daily webseries, ImprovLive 365.


For the next few months I expect all of my creative energy will be flowing towards that project, so if you want updates on what I'm thinking about, go to www.improvLive365.com.  I do love to write, so I expect I will be back here eventually, but for now my writing will be focused on the webseries.  


It is a lot of fun already, and even aside from the new skills I am learning (camera and lighting, hosting, interviewing, video construction and editing, etc.) I am thrilled to have an reason to experience the incredible range of  creativity of my fellow humans.  I hope you'll visit us there, and I'll check back in here every so often to let you know what we're up to!


BTW the first three episodes are a Welcome from me, an excerpt from an interview with painter and printmaker Jane Goldman called Happy Accidents  and a look at creativity and cube decorating in Cubicles.  


See you soon, and happy improvising!
Tom

Halloween: A Group Improvisation

When I got invited to play with Club d’Elf, one of my favorite bands, for a Halloween gig this Friday, I noticed I was extra excited about it, and it got me to wondering...

Even though Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and nothing is more fun than playing a Halloween show, it didn’t really seem to completely explain my excitement.  And why do I love Halloween so much, anyways?

Then it hit me.  Halloween is the biggest and most creative group improvisation that our culture allows!  Halloween creates an improvisatory structure that allows everyone to play together, improvising being anything they want.  Group improv on a grand scale!  It seems so obvious I’m surprised I never thought of it that way before (must be the influence of ImprovLive 365).  


But I guess that’s true of every holiday.  Holidays give people an improvisatory structure that enables them to create large scale group improvisations around certain culturally important ideas.  Whether you resonate to Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Years, (etc) or not, you gotta admit that’s a very cool idea.