Improvisation on Life's Journey

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Join Lake Fellowship member and musicologist Matthew Tift to explore the role of improvisation in our journeys through life. While we often think of improvisation as an activity associated with creative practices, we might not notice how much we improvise during the course of a typical day. Labels like "planner" or "free spirit" attempt to simplify our complex relationships to other people and objects, giving us a false sense of control in an unpredictable world.

Using the musical metaphor of improvisation -- and related terms such as performance, arrangement, and composition -- this program will explore how we balance our human tendency to create structures with the frequent need to break out of those structures. We'll discuss why improvisation is neither entirely individual nor entirely social, but somewhere in between. In every journey we will find times when we must improvise, so looking more closely at improvisation is not merely a theoretical exercise but an opportunity to develop a skill with practical benefits.

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