University Professors Press is pleased to announce the release of its latest book, Being Music: The Art of Open Improvisation, by Mark Miller with Art Lande. Miller and Lande are both grammy nominated musicians, and Miller is a professor at Naropa University. Miller and Lande have been playing music together for many years. In Being Music, they share their wisdom and experience about the art of improvisation.
About Being Music
Improvisation is a practice of musical exploration and discovery. What we explore is our lived experience and what we discover we share with our audience. As improvisers, our creative resources include sense perception, imagination, somatic presence, and the vitality of emotional expression. In collaboration we develop relationships that serve the music and balance the priorities of self and others in the ensemble. Being Music describes the craft of improvisation as “spontaneous composition” including an awareness of form, compositional focus, theme and development, stillness and creative flow. Miller and Lande address the problem of perfectionism and offer strategies for overcoming judgmental thinking and other obstacles to creative spontaneity. Abundant written musical examples and exercises offer the reader ample opportunity to practice the principles outlined in the text. With over forty-five years of experience performing together, Miller and Lande’s dialogical reflections on creativity and community offer a clear and practical guide to the creative process of improvisation for musicians of any style or genre, and at all levels of experience.