Playing improv music activates the reward system of the brain.
Articles on Improvisation
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While our culture is very different from Shakespeare’s London, his plays — and those by others — still carry the potential to bring people together and help us think deeply about our shared experience.
Peterson stands among the greatest virtuosi of musical history. He voiced stylistic grace, impeccable command of his instrument and the execution of spiritual freedom.
Improv theater is known for improvisation, audience participation and riffing on memes and stories circulating on social and traditional media – all hallmarks of right-wing media.
Improv performance artists are finding resonance in the fears, ideals and artistic expression evoked by the chaos of war in the early 20th century.
Audiences love improvised, off-the-cuff entertainment, and new research suggests it’s because spontaneity seems to offer a glimpse of the performer’s authentic self.
ChatGPT and other AI chatbots seem remarkably good at conversations. But you can’t believe anything they say. Sometimes, though, reality isn’t the point.
‘Flight 752 Elegies’ was composed for santur, percussion and choir, including a soprano singer, and can be viewed online.
Machines have been getting better at mimicking improvisation. But can this distinctly human process serve as a bulwark against the mechanization of life and art?
Meditations on improvisation in a year of both COVID-19 and what some called ‘the other pandemic’ of racism push us to go deeper to find ways to sustain healthy public common life.
Improvisation asks us to trust that surprise will teach us something. As we enter a new year and a post-pandemic landscape, musical improvisation offers inspiration.
A good public speaker needs to be able to write and deliver an effective speech as well as to improvise.
Is it possible to plan for the unforeseen? Some basic principles allow careful preparation to be reconciled with quickly shifting circumstances.
Necessity and desperation are portrayed as the prime motivators of innovative behaviour, but in reality, stability and holistic incentives go a long way to freeing up creative energy.
Health professionals need a dose of drama in their training to build clinical and interpersonal skills.
In the elementary classroom, improv can nurture a collaborative and creative climate in which even reticent kids want to participate.
Women are disturbingly under-represented in Australian jazz, with relatively few female composers and instrumentalists. What’s holding them back? And what can be done about it?
Many middle-class parents buy classical CDs because it is supposed to make their kids clever. But a jazz-loving academic has started using her favourite genre in early childhood learning.
South African jazz is experiencing a new wave like seldom before. One of its strongest proponents, jazz veteran Carlo Mombelli, has just released a new album.
What is the music of trees? German artist Bartholomäus Traubeck spun slices of logs on turntables that translate their textures and annual rings into music. Traubeck calls the result Years, and I played…
Top contributors
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Associate Professor of Education, University of Calgary
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Head of Composition, Australian National University
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Instructor, Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours) Program and Arts and Science Program, McMaster University
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Senior Lecturer of Music, University of the Witwatersrand
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Senior lecturer, Music education, North-West University
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Professor, Director of Research, Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Faculty of Arts, Monash University
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Adjunct assistant professor, Education, Queen's University, Ontario
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Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship, University of Florida
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Assistant Professor of Music and Culture in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media, University of Toronto
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Professor of music, School for Studies in Art and Culture, Carleton University
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Assistant Professor of Marketing, Cornell University
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Professor of Composition and Theory, Queen's University, Ontario
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Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Senior Lecturer in History of Art, University of Glasgow
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Professor, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph