The Brain on improv

Here at work is the master of improvisation on the piano - Keith Jarrett. The video below from Charles Limb looks at what is actually going on inside the brain during such a performance. The thesis is "can we really study this level of creativity scientifically". i.e. can we work out how it happens and code a machine to do it? I think not.... Enjoy 


Musician and researcher Charles Limb wondered how the brain works during musical improvisation -- so he put jazz musicians and rappers in an fMRI to find out. What he and his team found has deep implications for our understanding of creativity of all kinds.

Sonny Rollins Special

The living saxophone legend Sonny Rollins interviewed at 79, gives a fascinating insight into almost 60 years of experience playing and performing. To Sonny, jazz is obviously a way of thinking and approaching things, rather than a dictated musical form. If you want to understand a bit more about jazz there is no better way than listening to one of the greats telling how it is. The ability to transform a collective experience by making music is obviously intrinsic to his philosophy. "One performance on stage is worth 6 months practising at home".

Sonny also talks candidly about drug addiction, and reflects upon the artists' aspiration to leave the mundane nature of reality behind, by transcending to a beautiful place. Whether fuelled by alcohol, heroin, cocaine or cannabis Sonny discusses the trade off that drug use entails, where initial increases in creativity are ultimately transient, as the user spirals into a destructive pattern of addiction and diminishing returns. A noteworthy example being Charlie Parker turning up so late and gassed for a gig that Dizzy is heard on record asking "where the h**l have you been?"

With almost 60 years experience on the scene, Sonny contemplates how "getting into the zone" is where it's at. Sonny studied yoga in India where he often worried about being able to meditate, but his guru explained that when he played his horn he was actually meditating.

Ultimately Sonny's message seems to be that while true jazz may come from concentration on the transcendant nature of experience, it is connection via the true subconscious that requires the practise and  skill to tune into the experience and allow deep levels of creativity and spirituality to emerge. Enjoy!

So What !

So What!

Often we take too many things in life for granted. We fail to realise that life is impermanent. The Jazz pantheon is full of examples of stars that burned intensely and were suddenly gone (Eric Dolphy, Fats Navarro, Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown to name a few). Like stars in the night sky, the light from which may have died thousands of light years ago, we can nevertheless still rejoice in the intensity of their brilliance. The best classic jazz is a spontaneous celebration of the intensity of the immediate experience in the here and now.

We are not talking about elevator music here. This is music that stands as testament of man's ability to reach out and feel the sublime, through intuitive interaction with sound. Like all the best things in life it needs a little perseverance. Life is hard and so many of the jazz greats had a hard life, not least those who were black and brilliant in the face of a predominantly racist world. But more than music, jazz allows its players and listeners to esape the confines of limited time and space, the restrictions of blinkered thinking and concepts. From the 1940's onward jazz escaped those confines and developed from entertainment and mere accompaniment into an artform in its own right, a platform for the musician to excel. Nothing worthwhile is easy. 

In this "information age" do we really have a choice in the media we subscribe to, or are we drowning in a sea of trivial and meaningless drivel? Do we sit back and take what we are handed on a plate or do we seek out the truth of this human existence? Are we brainless consumers, like grazing cattle, or are we constantly seeking more? Why do we always want more? Is it because we are never satisfied. Is the majority of our media interaction pointless, lifeless, palliative nonsense that washes over the core of our being? Does media that is designed to titillate and stimulate tug at your guilt relfex. Are you aware it is primarily designed to get your money. Ultimately though it will not make you satisfied or happy.

I propose a challenge. Should you accept it, it is to actively filter your media. With so much you could subscribe to ask yourself what really matters. How much of your life are you going to comply with the advertisers agenda? Stand up for your right. Subscribe to what is meaningful and relish in the experience. In my opinion Jazz is worth spending time on, becasue it gets better with listening. It matures like fine wine or cheese.

So What? Exactly.
 
Miles Davis - So What