In my time as a violinist I have spent time immersed in many different genres of music.  Initially, I was a classical purest who played folk songs on the weekends, then I spent time with jazz musicians picking up bits and bobs of musical phrasing here and there, and finally started gigging and touring with different bands in Australia.  My ability to comfortably flit from style to style was wholly due to my ability to improvise, that is, to make up on the spot melodies that I felt complimentary to whatever I was doing at the time.

It seems to me that improvisation is a bit of a lost art these days.  In the baroque period it was a common affair for a group of amateur musicians to gather for a social evening of music making, invariably reading from a common score of figured bass from which they would interpret as they saw fit.  The parallel of this is of course seen in jazz ensembles, where players interpret charts of fiendishly complicated looking jazz chords.  These players are drawing upon a large well of knowledge to play like this, but what happens if there is no book or chords, no indication of what to play at all?  We are all familier with the ghastly and over-intellectual 'free improvisation' nightmare, but what of the spontaneous creation of beautiful melodies that come from nothing and fade away in much the same manner?  

It's a nice feeling to be able to cultivate space to hear the music inside yourself, and a nicer feeling to be able to create it, to give it to the world, as it were. It is not really possible to 'teach' the art of improvisation.  But it is definitely possible to facilitate the process of musical self-discovery, and that is what I am trying to do in my lessons.

What you then choose to do with it is up to you......

Alex.