"Improvisation in the Music Theory Classroom""

Post date: Oct 11, 2015 5:09:28 PM

date: Friday, 30 October

time: 5:00 - 7:00pm

location: TBD

The 2014 SMT Music and Improvisation Interest Group Meeting featured an extended conversation that centered on what it means to “adopt an improvisational attitude” in the music theory classroom. This included both engaging specifically improvisation-oriented themes (creating variations on a theme in real time, realizing and elaborating a figured bass, freely inventing within a chord-scale space, etc.) and more generally thinking about what an “improvisational attitude” can mean for any or all classroom activities (foregrounding radical creative thinking and problem-solving, for example).

Our 2015 meeting will turn discussion into action, featuring five short (fifteen-minute) improvisation-focused demonstrations, workshops, or “mock classrooms.” These will be hands-on activities, and we encourage all to participate as engaged, active learners.

The five workshops (order to be determined) are:

Taylor Carmona (University of Missouri Kansas City), "Melodic Conventions Through Improvisation"

Scott Murphy (University of Kansas), "Impromptu Discernment of Canonic Potential"

Nancy Rogers (Florida State University), "Leading by the Ear: Improvising Harmony in the Music Theory Classroom."

Johnandrew Slonimski and Gilad Radinovitch (Eastman School of Music), "Partimenti and Galant Schemata: Historical and Modern Tools for Teaching Improvisation"

Ji Hyn Woo (SUNY Fredonia), "Having fun clapping and singing, while improvising a modal tune."

A brief discussion will follow.