2023-24 Academic Catalog

Jon Batiste told Forbes in 2019: “I think that you have to open your mind to really be comfortable improvising. It really starts in the mind.” We’ll embrace this mind-music connection by thinking flexibly and critically about improvisation in American music, and by improvising musically ourselves. Readings and discussion will engage Black studies, performance studies, gender studies, philosophy, and political theory. And we’ll build our creative practice with your instruments and voices. Throughout, we’ll keep alive to the ethics of improvisation and the term’s multiplicity of meanings, which call out for your interpretation. Expected preparation: participation in a music ensemble, registration in music lessons, or facility on a musical instrument (Western or non-Western) including voice