The Art of Improvisation: Inspiration and Meaning for Music

"How many people have skinned their knees when they were playing as a kid?" It's a question that Christopher Azzara, Professor of Music Education at the Eastman School of Music, likes to ask his students. "If you didn't skin your knee, you weren't playing hard enough."
It's a notion that puts in perspective his approach to teaching music, particularly teaching students how to improvise when it's outside their comfort zone. The message is, it's okay to make mistakes. From Azzara's perspective, it's the mistakes that sometimes allow students to learn the most.
Azzara has been teaching undergraduate and graduate students at Eastman these skills for years, drawing from his own background as a jazz musician where improvisation is at the core of the art form. Many of his students come from a classical background, and while their musical abilities are well defined, they may not have had many opportunities to improvise. Azzara's passion and easy-going manner allow them the freedom to explore what can be foreign territory for some of his students without fear of failure.
When Howard Potter, director of the Eastman Community Music School, approached Azzara about teaching a series of public workshops on improvisation, it seemed like a perfect fit. The approach for these workshops is the same as with the Eastman students, but the range of ages, abilities, background and instruments is much wider.
Some of the people that show up to the free workshops are in elementary school, some are years into their retirement, and there is everything in between. Some show up with a violin and years of lessons, others come with a banjo that was picked up as a hobby. For Azzara, the variety of people that attend these workshops is part of the beauty. That diversity can only enhance the learning experience from his viewpoint.
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[@rekharani9437]

Nice!

[@christinepotter7917]

Love this!! Well expressed!!