Improvisation has played an important role throughout the history of western music: a central practice within certain repertoires and contexts, it also appears as an experimental tool for artistic exploration, in a search for expressive immediacy and perhaps authenticity. It is creativity in real time, which manifests itself in sound at the very moment of its conception, bringing into play a flow of consciousness and body movements with constant spontaneous interactions between the human, musical and material elements that participate in it.

Being inevitably informed and guided by the world of references of each improviser and by the expectations of the repertoire or musical language to which it may be associated, this is also what promotes the diversity of improvisation: the richness of the individual and of his experience, as well as the possibility of opening up new creative spaces in the encounter between different improvisers. But precisely because of this diversity of languages, modes and functions — including the various degrees of formality or freedom that underlie them — as well as the different possible relationships with texts (musical or otherwise) that can serve as a starting point (or as a goal, in the case of the transcription of a session), musical improvisation is a multifarious and complex concept, whose different practices can encompass often contrasting premises that should be observed, discussed and put into dialogue with one another.

In order to encourage these discussions, ESMAE, CESEM – P. Porto, CESEM’s Music and Interpretation Thematic Line and Xperimus are organizing the first edition of the Jornadas de Música e Interpretação, a conference which will take place from 27 to 29 September 2022 at the Helena Sá e Costa Theatre in ESMAE. The theme of musical improvisation — in different contexts, periods and styles — will be explored through a series of participatory workshops, talks and performances organized around the ways in which improvisation is thought and performed within various musical practices.

Further information and registration form can be found here