I watched the most amazing clip today, and I really want to share it with you. It’s of a piano teacher, Jessica Roemischer, and one of her students, Tanny Labshere, playing a improvised duet together:
When listening to this piece I felt moved to tears; both women seem so lost in the music, their fingers moving to create such beautiful melodies and harmonies, their conscious selves dissolved in the process of improvised composition. I don’t know what it is about improvised music that moves me so…. Possibly it’s the fact that something once improvised is rarely repeated: is often, in fact, impossible to repeat.
It reminded me of the incredibly emotional improvised piece Jennifer Lin created for the delegates of TED:
Do you enjoy improvising in music or in any other form of creativity? What is it that you enjoy about improvisation? Do you have a favourite example of improvisation that you would like to share?
These were beautiful videos.
I love improvising in singing and poetry.
Thanks so much for sharing these.
Flora Morris Brown, Ph.D.s last blog post..It’s Been Wa-a-a-y Too Serious Around Here Lately
When I was in school studying improvisation — especially working with classical musicians learning to improvise — the first thing that we had to address was the judgment about what was happening. The ground rule becomes whatever comes is, let it be. Once the improvisors are committed to that principle then a kind of “automatic music writing” begins to happen. I witnessed this with children where, for instance, the black lower keys on the piano would become brown bears and the white upper keys, white polar bears and what happened between them. With adults it could be the FEELING that they were becoming Rachmaninoff or John Lennon. Whatever a person’s deepest joys about music could begin to resonate through them. There are few things with so much expressive power. And to watch an improvised vocabulary grow based on an analysis and articulation about what was happening in other pieces of music people loved was equally astonishing…
Amy,
Thank you so much for posting this video of my piano improvisation with Tanny. She lives at the Riverbrook Residence for Women with developmental disabilities in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where I teach. My experience working with Tanny, together with responses such as yours and those who have commented, give me confidence in that most beautiful, ineffable dimension of the human soul. Warmest regards, Jessica