1. An Improvised Life

I remember the first time improvisation found me. I was watching Oscar Peterson perform with his trio at Massey Hall in Toronto. I was familiar with his recordings, but this was the first time I heard him perform live. The feeling of that performance has never left me. That was in the early 1980s.

Sometimes, an experience isn't something you just have; it is a force that inhabits you and, from that moment on, refuses to leave you alone. I remember watching Oscar's hands on the keyboard, and it seemed as though he had a third hand. His prodigious technique was humbling. However, what fascinated me was how his technical wizardry was subservient to the joyful, awe-inspiring music he created.

Musical improvisation is a crucially important, vastly underrated, and horrendously ignored mode of self-expression. As a classically-trained pianist, improvisation was voodoo to me. Traditional piano pedagogy is a kind of strange visual exile. Music begins with the eyes looking at notation and translating symbols on the page to notes on the keyboard.

Classical piano pedagogy focuses on interpretation. As a classical pianist, I learned compositions by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt and interpreted them in, presumably, an interesting and personal way. The notion of improvising never occurred to me, nor was it "allowed." This is a tribute to the colonization of music pedagogy by analysis.

Some people have criticized Oscar's playing as superficial; that is, all flash and no expression. I don't hear that at all. Sure, I was humbled by his technical prowess, but I was also entranced by the feeling of his improvisations. There was joy, loss, awe, and beauty in the arc of his phrases. During that live performance, his music had presence. There was something tactile moving in the air. It was a transformative moment.

I'm feeling guilty about the harsh comment I made, about what I believe to be the stifling and regressive nature of classical piano pedagogy. To be clear, I worked with exceptional piano teachers from childhood through my university studies, most especially Dr. Reginald Bedford at McMaster University. Instead of the usual technical humdrum, Dr. Bedford taught me how to create and evolve my own technique in connection with the repertoire I was playing. Still, improvisation was absent. It is the pedagogy that is stifling and regressive.

We all experience sudden unexpected internal shifts in life we never see coming. Some of these shifts, like the one I am describing here, are inspiring. But we all have other kinds of transformative shifts in life driven by loss, regret, and pain. These shifts are transformative because they recalibrate our sense of awareness to a different frequency. In the weeks and months after Oscar's performance at Massey Hall, I found myself haunted by troubling questions I didn't want to ask. The kinds of questions that attach themselves to your senses and stick to your skin.

Eventually, the beast revealed itself: Why can't I improvise?

After twenty years of training, I felt as if my musical spirit had been abandoned, exiled, and orphaned. I had practiced long and hard, and I couldn't improvise my way out of a paper bag. I didn't want to sound like Oscar Peterson (not that I could); but I did want to be able to improvise so that I could feel and give authentic expression to my own musical energy, which could also inspire joy, loss, awe, and beauty in my own way.

During my graduate studies, I decided to investigate the role of improvisation in classical music (i.e. music composed by dead, white, mostly European, males). It was obvious: classical composers were gifted and prolific improvisers. Throughout the history of classical music, improvisation was both a critical compositional skill and regular feature at live performances. Of course, we have no way to hear them, but imagine giving a theme to J.S. Bach and hearing him improvise a live performance.

For several years, I was the principal pianist at a dance school. Examination period meant sight reading; the examiner would bring music for the exams and the pianist is expected to play it without rehearsal. During one exam, however, I was asked to play "monkey music" for younger students. I think I said, "Excuse me?" It was no joke. They needed monkey music now. Anxiety sat right beside me on the bench and smirked. I played something. It was awful. Here lies the principal pianist, unable to monkey around on the piano.

Later, as a piano teacher, I asked a new student of mine to play some monkey music. She was five years old. Instantly, she started moving around the keyboard freely. Sometimes she would play from low to high to low. I asked her what she was playing. She said, "Oh, it's the monkey swinging." Then she kept on playing and had a story for every gesture she made. That's another moment that refuses to leave me alone. She experienced joy improvising monkey music; I died a death of a thousand cuts - the monkeys had the knives.

Improvisation is truth. And honesty. And hope. It is also very humbling, because it brings you into alignment with the uncertainty of the here and now. You don't have to play an instrument or be an artist to embrace improvisation. In a sense, it's a psychological ability that helps you to navigate life. Improvisation offers a way to express acceptance of the limitations of life. It can help navigate the confluence of everyday life.

I stopped playing piano for thirty years. I started playing again ten years ago. Today, at the piano, I only improvise. I was a fluent sight-reader, but I never look at music while playing. It actually gets in the way now.

Well, I may begin stretching the metaphor a little thin here. In a deep sense, improvisation is a quality of presence, an orientation to experience, and a way of interacting with life. I can be playing quite well at the piano and, inevitably, the unexpected comes along and I find myself surrounded by uncertainty; that is, I've improvised myself into a corner and have no idea what to do.

That can happen in life too. Everything can be going along relatively smoothly, and then the wheels fall off. But when it happens at the keyboard it's easier, albeit nerve-racking, because I'm always working with the same 88-note patterns of black and white keys. Life's patterns are always in a state of emergence so we can never see it until it happens.

I'm not a great improviser at the piano, but the experience of it brings me joy. As children, improvisation comes naturally, even if it's monkey music. Now, as an older adult, I've reclaimed a journey that began in childhood. I thought about using words like playing, creating, or exploring, but improvisation felt right.

In this first post, I have tried to capture the spirit of this website. The focus of this site is improvisation in everyday life, so it makes sense that my only plan is to let improvisation be the design. Perhaps that's just another way of saying, Let's see what happens.

Notes

1. John Mortensen is a leader in the promotion of improvisation in classical music. In this video, he explains why classical musicians can't improvise.
2. Even in jazz, improvisation is often taught with a focus on analysis and theory, which completely misses the point. Improvisation is first and foremost and felt, embodied experience - that is its source and origin.
3. Keith Jarrett says improvisation means that both the audience and the performer are being surprised at the same time and the performer adapts to the sounds as they are occurring.
4. In 2019, neuroscientists identified that different areas of the brain are activated developed during improvisation versus traditional training. This helps to explain why someone with traditional classical music training cannot improvise.
5. Improvisation exists in a cultural context. For example, I have a passion for the music of New Orleans and I borrow from various musicians in my own playing. But the music I improvise will never be authentic New Orleans music. John Cleary offers a brief history of New Orleans piano music.
6. One of the most remarkable improvised performances I have ever heard is Keith Jarret's Koln Concert. Note three above offers some background, but I would recommend finding a private space, putting some headphones, and immerse yourself in this music.
7. A sidenote to the Koln Concert: A complete transcription of Keith's performance exist in which every note he plays is rendered visually in music notation. Strangely, I have seen other pianists learning to play it note for note. This exemplifies a remarkable misunderstanding of Keith's performance, improvisation, and creative expression. For the pianists out there, click on the link above to see sample pages from the transcription. Does that look like fun?