Arts Week Performance

I thought our performance did really well to highlight what improvising is about. It was impressive that we took suggestions from the crowd and actually made coherent music out of it with some feeling behind it. Since suggestions like "Burning Monkey" can't be composed, they must go on feeling, and that was one of the nicest parts of this class: that people like me who have played before but have limited knowledge of theory can find their way into the music. When I was playing, especially on saxophone, it was like crawling around in the dark unti I found something that works and then I would crawl around and find another note that works. It sounds painful but it was fun and I think our whole group actually benefited from our lack of knowledge because it forces you to go by ear and feeling rather than previous knowledge. This way we played notes that shouldn't have been played and probably sounded extremely strange but eventually worked out, making it all the more interesting. I think we could have benefited from a longer playing time, because its hard to get a good jam going right away and sometimes the best parts only come after fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes of experimenting. On the other hand it would have been tough for the audience to listen to a 40 minute jam.