Description
Book SynopsisExamines how the teaching and learning of improvisational musical practices can be understood as vital and publicly resonant acts that generate new forms of knowledge, new understandings of identity and community, and new imaginative possibilities.
Trade ReviewComing from two authors who are improvisers themselves, and who have sought out the views and visions of improvising musicians and thoughtful scholars,
Jamming the Classroom paves a pathway for honing one’s skills, for evaluating the process by which improvisation develops, and for offering a critical analysis of improvisation and how it is taught/learned. This is scholarship at its best, where in this case the very best minds on the topic are featured in support of themes surrounding improvisation and pedagogical practice." - Patricia Shehan Campbell, University of Washington; Carleton University
"By highlighting the many ways that people learn and engage with musical improvisation, as well as the potential benefits of musical improvisation for both individuals and communities,
Jamming the Classroom serves as a valuable contribution to—and indeed, may rise to the top of—the recent wave of studies that seek to trouble and expand received notions of musical values." - David Ake, Frost School of Music, University of Miami
Table of Contents
- Preface – “Stepping into Another World”
- Introduction – The Many Classrooms of Improvisation
- Chapter One – Solo Dialogics: Autodidactic Methods of Learning to Improvise
- Chapter Two – Hearing What the Other Has to Play: Co-Learning through Musical Improvisation
- Chapter Three – Music Festivals as Alternative Pedagogical Institutions
- Chapter Four – Improv Goes to School: Musical Improvisation and the Academy
- Chapter Five – A Force That’s Active in the World: Community-Oriented Pedagogies of Improvisation
- Coda: Performance as Pedagogy
- Works Cited
- Selected Discography of Improvised Music
- Index