Introduction

Improvisation is something that fascinates me. I am an active musician and teacher and embrace this concept in my approaches to both. My instrument of choice, or maybe more appropriately, the instrument that chose me is, the vibraphone. A lot of the music I play can be said to grow out of the Jazz tradition. I am passionately connected to music and the art of composition.
I feel as though improvisation permeates every aspect of our lives and if we can learn to recognize and embrace it, we can work to focus ourselves, becoming more productive, spiritually aware, observant human beings. I think people often consider improvisation to be synonymous with randomness or a chaos. This to me is not the case, as it is my belief there is some underlying order, and intent (on some level) always accompanying an improvisation. An act of randomness is not necessarily improvised. This is one of the ideas I'd like to get more into and it will take us to more philosophical places. I would like to briefly introduce some of the other topics I will be exploring. I want to open up a dialogue regarding improvisation/spirituality (not necessarily in a religious context), improvisation/music, improvisation/everyday life (including day to day communication, conversation, learning, problem solving), improvisation/composition (writing music, plays, painting), improvisation/nature (bird songs, dolphins, whales...), and improvisation as meditation. I would also like to discuss some of the literature around this issue including, Kenny Werner's, Effortless Mastery, Rafi Zabor's, The Bear Comes Home, Stephen Nachmanovitch's, Free Play, Robert M. Pirsig's, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Douglass Hofstadter's, Godel, Escher, Bach. These are just a few of the many concepts I hope to delve deeply into here. My approach to this blog will be one defined by improvisation, so I hope that new topics will branch out from those above, creating a vast, intricate web of ideas and insight. It should be fun.