The Teaching Life: Classical or Improv? (Part I)

I grimaced suspiciously at the leadership conference schedule. Monday and Wednesday looked comfortingly normal. But Tuesday? “Leadership as Improv.” Hmph!

No Improv!

I don’t do improv. I love drama…as long as I’m performing a well-memorized script or directing. But improv? No way. I like my spontaneity well-planned, thank you!

I walked reluctantly into the auditorium on Tuesday morning (with secret plans to bail the moment my hyper-sensitive comfort zone indicators signaled the slightest discomfort) to find a jazz quartet warming up. Surprise and relief mingled; I would not be pulled on stage, given three random words, and instructed to “improv.”

But the warning bells did begin to toll, signaling my love/hate relationship with music.

I started piano lessons when I was just five, and for several years, I loved playing. Somewhere during elementary school — probably when “we” decided that I would drop horseback riding lessons but keep up piano lessons — I started to loathe all things piano. I regularly asked for ragtime and bluegrass, the kind of music I loved. But always I was given Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach.

You see, my teachers were the best classical competition instructors in the area. (Years later when I signed up and paid for my own piano lessons in college — so I could finally play boogie woogie! — the music department chairman took one look at my “former teacher” list and asked, “Do you want to be a music major?”) My teachers didn’t teach me to play the kind of music I loved; they expected me to love their expert classical training.

As Dr. Michael Gold of Jazz Impact began the “Leadership as Improv” morning segment, he discussed the difference between classical music and improv. Classical musicians are highly trained, skilled, and practiced performers. A classical musical score is extremely detailed; each note is precisely shown. The purpose of classical music is duplication, doing what’s been done — often many times — in the past, honoring the composer (usually a dead guy.) The structure of classical music is set, stable, even rigid.

I recognized one more truth about classical music, at least according to my own experience. With classical music, errors mean only one thing: failure. When listening to a familiar piece of classical music, we wince at the first mistake, tense up at the second, and start shaking our heads by the third. One of the expectations of classical music is perfection.

With improv, the musicians are also highly trained, skilled, and practiced performers. But the score is minimal. (My favorite part of this illustration is the word “etc.” — you won’t find that in a classical music score!) The purpose of improv is creativity, innovation, and dynamic change; in fact, the composer is the performer, and the composition occurs as (s)he performs, giving the music immediacy and life. I was surprised to learn how much structure improv actually involves; it is not chaos or “anything goes.” But it’s flexible, giving rise to a paradox: autonomy within community.

Another paradox is created with so-called “errors”: harmonious dissonance. In fact, Dr. Gold referred to jazz “errors” as “competent mistakes.”

Woah. Stop the show! What did he just say? These two words together created such an oxymoron, my brain simply refused to compute them. At the break, I had to go up and clarify, “You used a specific phrase about mistakes — what was the word you used before ‘mistakes’?” He laughed (because I was the dozenth to ask) and repeated, “competent mistakes.”

I immediately texted my Melancholy husband: “I’m learning about “competent mistakes!”

He replied, “What the heck does that mean?”

I responded, “I have no clue. But I’m eager to learn!”

Part II

Part III