performing arts. And to bring some balance into the equation, numerous are the examples of celebrated soloists whose self -confidence is temporarily shaken just before entering on stage. In the unexperienced improvisor the absence of a composition, printed, written or memorized, may indeed create a momentary anxiety.
In order to understand better the principle of improvisation and thereby lower our mental barriers, let us leave the music aside for a moment and consider other activities in life such as walking, driving a vehicle, meeting people, new ones, known ones, addressing a group, a classroom or an assembly, family or professional. All of these activities are full of improvisation which we face with skill, flair, experience, routine.
Similarly in improvising music we can count on all that we have gathered over time, not just vague notions but an enormous wealth of technical skills and musical expressivity we consciously acquired in playing and listening to music. We do not need to learn again to walk, talk or learn the alphabet. In improvising music the scales and harmonies are the same as in the scores, they are well known to us. Improvisation may be compared to conversing in a foreign language after years of reading and reciting and loving the literature of that language.
Improvisation is a liberating and enriching experience that will widen your musical insight and inevitably influence your relationship to your instrument as well as your approach to the existing repertoire, whether you improvise for your pleasure or for an audience.
©Hendrik BOUMAN, Oxford 2011