Improvisation Quotes - Page 2

• I'm proud of my ability to understand what somebody else is trying to do and help them achieve it, because part of the aesthetic of improvisation is service. We don't lead, we only follow. You never say no. Serve the servant, follow the follower. And that's very valuable in your life, as well as very valuable in your work.

  Stephen Colbert

  Trying, Followers, Proud

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, tv.avclub.com. January 25, 2006.

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• Ever fresh the broad creation,
  A divine improvisation,
  From the heart of God proceeds,
  A single will, a million deeds.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Heart, Deeds

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.94, Delphi Classics

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• Composition is selective improvisation.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Composition, Selective

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• What matters most to me? To work with my model until I have it enough in me to be able to improvise, to let my hand run free.

  Henri Matisse

  Running, What Matters, Hands

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• The minute you make a mistake - that's improvisation!

  Barry Harris

  Mistake, Minutes

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• Free improvisation, in addition to being a highly skilled musical craft, is open to use by almost anyone - beginners, children, and non-musicians.

  Derek Bailey

  Children, Musical, Crafts

  Derek Bailey (1992). “Improvisation: its nature and practice in music”

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• Successful improvisation is mostly a matter of taking your thoughts out of the equation, because thinking can keep the magic from happening. You have to be open enough to let the magic happen, instead of trying to make it happen because magic is never made.

  Jimmy Herring

  Successful, Thinking, Magic

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• if you don't think that all life is improvisation, then you haven't been paying attention. Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans.

  Joan Rivers

  Thinking, Attention, Life Is

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• My advice to you: live in the moment. Stay fluid and roll with those changes. Life is just a big extended improvisation. Embrace the ever changing, ever evolving world with the best rule I’ve ever found. Say 'YES AND.”

  Jane Lynch

  Life Changing, Advice, Live In The Moment

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• In 1968 I ran into Steve Lacy on the street in Rome. I took out my pocket tape recorder and asked him to describe in fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation. He answered: "In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds." His answer lasted exactly fifteen seconds.

  Frederic Rzewski

  Music, Rome, Differences

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• Improvisation, it is a mystery. You can write a book about it, but by the end no one still knows what it is. When I improvise and I'm in good form, I'm like somebody half sleeping. I even forget there are people in front of me. Great improvisers are like priests; they are thinking only of their god.

  Stephane Grappelli

  Book, Sleep, Writing

  Matt Glaser, Stephane Grappelli (1981). “Jazz Violin”, p.63, Oak Publications

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• You are about to start the greatest improvisation of all. With no script. No idea what's going to happen, often with people and places you have never seen before. And you are not in control. So say 'yes.' And if you're lucky, you'll find people who will say 'yes' back.

  Stephen Colbert

  Graduation, Ideas, People

  "23 Of The Best Pieces Of Advice Ever Given To Graduates". Stephen Colbert 2006 Knox Commencement Address, www.businessinsider.com. May 15, 2013.

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• Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation.

  Jan Garbarek

  Faces, Sometimes, Failing

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• Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas.

  Arnold Schoenberg

  Writing, Ideas, Enough

  Arnold Schoenberg, Leonard Stein (1975). “Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg”, p.439, Univ of California Press

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• The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese.

  Frank Zappa

  Music, Drama, Guitar

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• I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground.

  John McLaughlin

  Music, School, Mean

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• To work from nature is to improvise.

  Georges Braque

  Karen Wilkin, Georges Braque (1991). “Georges Braque”

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• Improvisation is really not so much remembering things. And this is what I do when I play. I forget things. When I go on the stage, I want my mind to be a blank, so that I can - things can come into me without my knowing where they came from.

  Sonny Rollins

  Play, Knowing, Mind

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

  Steve Lacy

  Music, Want, Jazz

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• The improvisation had to be in public, because you only get value playing to strangers.

  Keith Johnstone

  Stranger, Values

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

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• Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Important, Age, Way

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• To write a book about improvisation is partly a contradiction in terms. Improvisation is spontaneous. It's in the moment.

  Sally Schneider

  Book, Writing, Spontaneity

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• You can't make a mistake when you improvise.

  Patti Smith

  Mistake, Drumming, Cold Feet

  Patti Smith (2010). “Just Kids”, p.185, A&C Black

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• These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.

  Walter Benjamin

  Life, Lying, Blow

  Walter Benjamin (2016). “One-Way Street”, p.35, Harvard University Press

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• Art originates in play - in improvisation, experiment, and fantasy; it remains forever, in its deepest instincts, playful and spontaneous, an exercise of the imagination analogous to the exercising of the physical body to no purpose other than ecstatic release.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Exercise, Play

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art”, p.39, Zondervan

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