Miraculous art of improvisation is built on thousands of practice hours at the keyboard

There's an excellent article in the current issue of Seed magazine on what makes it possible for musicians to improvise. It's in two parts: the first focuses on pianist and Mozart expect Robert Levin, and how he mastered the art of improvisation; the second looks at how all of this takes place in the brain, based on research by cognitive ethnomusicologist Aaron Berkowitz and University of Western Ontario neuroscientist Daniel Ansari.

I can't speak to the science, but everything on the musician's side makes perfect sense.

Essentially, the musician needs to assimilate all the elements needed to fluently make up music through thousands of hours of practice. Then, the musician can switch off the omigod, what an I going to do next? part of their mind, and let the neurons and brain cells do a little dance through to the fingers.

As much as I was hoping for a pushbutton answer (something like a diet pill or Prozak), the truth is that the miracle of improvisation is not possible without some sort of punishing bootcamp. Fortunately, the reward is worth it.

Here is improviser extraordinaire Gabriela Montero, doing her things with "Je ne regrette rien," in concert, followed by my favourite organ improviser Daniel Roth, the titular organist at Saint-Sulpice church in Paris, teasing out a little something tweety on a Beethoven theme earlier this year: