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2 unusual facts about Improvisation


Kirsten Gronfield

Kirsten Gronfield (born November 29, 1977) is an American improv comedy actress.

Play by ear

Improvisation, the act of inventing all or part of a process as it is performed.


A band

A Band, a musical improvisation group, originally from Nottingham, England

Ami Yoshida

Soba to Bara, a 2009 release on Erstwhile Records, found Yoshida and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) performing one 47-minute improvisation each and pairing the two recordings, each musician's part unheard by the other.

Andrew Ranken

He contributed to the music soundtrack of "Macbeth", a Puppet Theatre Barge production, with a drumming improvisation.

Béla Quartet

Several string quartets and other chamber works have been written for the ensemble by Jean-Pierre Drouet, Garth Knox, Karl Naegelen, Alvaro Leòn Martinez, Frédéric Aurier, Daniel D'Adamo, Thierry Blondeau, Jérôme Combier...
They support all forms of musical creation: mixed media music, improvisation, musical theatre, and commissioned works.

Big Neighborhood

Bill Meredith quipped in the JazzTimes that the album "simply lacks the unbridled improvisation and interplay of his stage shows" and that "the guests are also so numerous that things feel contrived".

Birgitte Alsted

The group experimented with alternative forms and collective improvisation and performed the members' own compositions in unusual places, such as the Nørreport Station and Copenhagen Zoo.

Dad's Garage Theatre Company

Dad's Garage is a Theatresports franchise, its original ensemble having trained with Keith Johnstone, author of Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre and Impro for Storytellers.

Dick Lövgren

In September 2010, Lövgren was accepted into the Gothenburg Music University to study improvisation and composition with Anders Jormin, the Swedish jazz double bass player, arranger and bandleader who has worked with numerous jazz artists, such as Bobo Stenson, Charles Lloyd, Tomasz Stańko, Don Cherry, Elvin Jones, Gilberto Gil, Lee Konitz, Joe Henderson, Kenny Wheeler and Jon Balke.

Doudou Gouirand

With the very successful Nino Rota/Fellini album (Deux Z/Harmonia Mundi, 1995), acclaimed arrangement and composition work done around Nino Rota's film music, he explored a more European and typically Mediterranean idiom, while keeping a lot of improvisation.

Drama Centre London

Like most drama schools, Drama Centre places a particular emphasis on the work of Stanislavski,also training students in improvisation through the Vakhtangov and Lecoq traditions.

Drew McCreadie

He is a member of Urban Improv improvisation troupe and Canadian Content sketch troupe, whose members have/do include The Simpsons comic book writer Ian Boothby, Comedy Inc. star Roman Danylo and Air Farce actress Penelope Corrin.

Edward Woodall

Most recently, Ed Woodall became a movement and improvisation teacher at Oxford School of Drama.

Emil Reich

Will Johnston has called Reich "a flowering of Hungarian improvisation" and "an unduly neglected English-language essayist".

Eric Carbonara

Recent years have revealed a departure from his psych/krautrock-influenced work to a kaleidoscopic realm of minimalism, electro-acoustic improvisation, free noise guitar thrashing, the folk music of North Africa and Andalusia and Hindustani classical music.

Face Off Unlimited

In 2010 Face Off Unlimited opened Face Off University at The Secret Theatre in Long Island City, New York, offering classes on improvisation and their approach to the art form.

Fantasia Lindum

The album title is taken from the musical sequence which makes up the first side of the album: a fantasia is a free musical composition with its roots in the art of improvisation; Lindum is the latin name for the city of Lincoln.

FMP/Free Music Production

Free Music Production (FMP) is a German record label founded by Jost Gebers, Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald, and Alexander von Schlippenbach in 1969, specializing in free improvisation and free jazz, usually by European, often German musicians.

Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, is a book written by Stephen Nachmanovitch and originally published in 1990 by Jeremy Tarcher of the Penguin Group.

Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza

Drawing on jazz, serialism, musique concrete, and other avant-garde techniques developed by contemporary classical music composers such as Luigi Nono and Giacinto Scelsi, the group was dedicated to the development of new music techniques by improvisation, noise-techniques, and anti-musical systems.

Gumbo Millennium

The band tackles the Exxon Valdez scandal and environmental neglect on the soulful "Valdez 27 Million?" and explores jazz improvisation with "Dude U Knew."

Hattie Hayridge

In 2009, she starred alongside Phill Jupitus, Marcus Brigstocke and Sanjeev Bhaskar in the UK tour of the hit American improvisation show, Totally Looped.

John Korsrud

He appeared with musicians such as George Lewis, Butch Morris, Barry Guy, Kenny Wheeler, Han Bennink, the NOW Orchestra, the Vancouver Ensemble of Jazz Improvisation and the Duke Ellington Orchestra (under the direction of Paul Ellington).

Josh Lawson

He also spent one year studying improvisation techniques in Los Angeles at The Second City, The Groundlings, ACME Comedy Theatre and I.O. West.

Lê Quan Ninh

After graduating, he taught percussion for 3 years at a conservatory in Bondy, France while performing with contemporary music, dance, and theater groups often using self-taught techniques and found objects in his improvisation.

Levy Li

During the summer of 2009, Levy completed a digital film making and acting course in New York Film Academy and also learned the art of improvisation through Improv Asylum North End, Boston training center.

Live PA

Some artists like Brian Transeau and Jamie Lidell utilize hardware and software tools custom-designed for live expression and improvisation.

Marcel Dupré

Dupré's "Symphonie-Passion" began as an improvisation on Philadelphia's Wanamaker Organ.

Melina Paez

She has trained for improvisation at Chicago's The Second City, performed in several sketch comedy shows, plays and in non-commercial radio (DJ Slothgirl, 89.1fm WIDR, Kalamazoo).

Michael Matthes

During the same time he studied Analysis, Harmony, Counterpoint and Fugue with Yvonne Desportes and Marcel Bitsch and the improvisation with Pierre Cochereau.

Miles Stroth

In 1991, Stroth began studying long-form improvisation with Del Close and Charna Halpern at what was then called Improv Olympic, now the iO Theater in Chicago.

Musical improvisation

Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach all belonged to a tradition of solo keyboard improvisation.

Nicholas Grigsby

A former organ scholar of Salisbury Cathedral, he studied organ and improvisation with Colin Walsh, Organist Laureate of Lincoln Cathedral, Peter Wright at Southwark Cathedral, London and in France at Rouen Conservatoire with the blind organist Louis Thiry, a former pupil of the late virtuoso Marchal.

Outnumbered

It's also taken a leaf out of Curb Your Enthusiasm's book with large chunks of improvisation – although the strongest language you'll find here is "ponk".

Pedro Luís Neves

He studied biology at the University of Lisbon and formed a jazz quartet at the Hot Club of Portugal, entered the universe of improvisation and composition techniques, simultaneously collaborating in the creation of two experimental theatre shows with Lisbon's Comuna Teatro de Pesquisa and Teatro Oficina from Brazil, in Brecht's play Galileo.

Sacrifist

Additionally, Bootsy Collins and Bernie Worrell (of Parliament-Funkadelic), both also featured on the debut album, return for one lengthy track each: "Deathstar" includes Collins' "free-form bass explorations" and "Crossing" features Worrell's "psychedelic improvisation on a distorted Hammond organ".

Sarah Saltzberg

For the past ten years, Saltzberg has been teaching improvisation to students in grades K-5 at P.S. 6 on the Upper East Side.

Sherry Glaser

Glaser's inspiration for solo performance came while practicing improvisation in the early 1980s in San Diego in the company of Whoopi Goldberg, Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy.

Stars Like Fleas

Frequently compared to later Talk Talk and Robert Wyatt, their music blends avant-jazz and free improvisation with electronic textures and several overdubbed murmured vocal lines.

Telectu

Their career spanning 30 years, includes a voluminous discography, many national and international performances and collaborations, both live and recorded, with important experimental and improvisation musicians such as Elliott Sharp, Carlos Zíngaro, Jac Berrocal, Sunny Murray, Chris Cutler amongst others.

The Last of the Blue Devils

Songs in the film include "One O'Clock Jump", "Honey Hush", "Rose Garden", "Chains of Love", "Shake, Rattle and Roll", and a performance by the Basie Orchestra of "Night Train" featuring a lengthy improvisation on tenor saxophone by the song's writer, Jimmy Forrest.

Theresa Thomason

Thomason continued to perform with Dream Theater and performed Clare Torry's famous vocal improvisation on "The Great Gig in the Sky" when the band covered Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on October 11, 2005 and the Hammersmith Apollo in London on October 25, 2005.

Thomas Goss's School of Rock

Quoted from the school's website: "The School of Rock teaches young musicians how to be in a band. Rockers-in-training learn important life skills - like how to work together, improvise, prepare new material, and perform in front of an audience - all while learning classic and modern rock that will make them better musicians. It's a great way to meet other young people interested in rock music, and to learn how to jam in a structured environment."

Triadex Muse

Morgan Fisher, a British avant-garde musician/composer based in Tokyo, currently owns three Muses and has them "perform" together in harmony (using Molex sync cables) during his improvisation concerts.

Trichy Sankaran

Sankaran has also worked in the fields of jazz, electronic music, and free improvisation with the composers David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum, Charlie Haden, Pauline Oliveros, Paul Plimley, the Jazz Orchestra of York University, Anthony Braxton, Dave Brubeck, Glen Velez, Nexus, and World Drums.

Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam

She learnt detailed aspects of manodharma sangita or improvisation under the guidance of guru Sangeeta Bhushanam K Krishnaswamy of Annamalai University.

Viola Spolin

Her first and most famous was Improvisation for the Theater published by Northwestern University Press.


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