flying...

Classically trained musicians engage in tireless hours of training and practice to play or sing music beautiful to our ears, honoring timeless composers. More than once, I’ve heard these musicians say that if they are asked to get off the page and improvise, they are lost. Interestingly, hundreds of years ago, improvising over a theme in a piece of classical music was a common practice.

There’s a river between the shore of the notes on the page and the freedom of improvisation. How do you get across?

Improvisation without form can be interesting, unconventional, and a wonderful way to express ourselves. However, after a while, without the ground of form, this kind of improvisation is limited. In the same way that darkness needs light to define itself, or yin is the partner to yang, we need form, a container from which to begin. Accomplished Jazz musicians are never far from theory. It’s the automatic identification of what key they are in that allows them to fly, to depart from the specified notes and begin to pLaY elsewhere.

Creating new intervals and including notes from other scales is the risky remedy for predictability that keeps music alive. It has taken me over 20 years as a singer to get to the point where I can hear a song for a brief moment and jump right in. I can’t tell you what an incredible feeling it is to be able to do this...It truly feels like flying…