The Lived Experience of Improvisation

‘The Lived Experience of Improvisation: in music, learning and life’, makes an important contribution to this growing field of study.'

-- Nick Sorensen, Bath Spa University

'[Rose's] book has some of the flavour of the Phd it was based on, but provides a valuable source for thinking about improvisation in all aspects... This is a rich and rewarding book. '

-- Andy Hamilton, The Wire

'The Lived Experience of Improvisation is a tremendous resource that should be included in every institutional music course syllabus, especially at the post-secondary level. Rose’s ethnomusicological themes craftily frame improvisation as a metaphor for sociopolitical and sociocultural involvement and successfully guide the reader to consider improvisation a phenomenon across broader experience. Accordingly, Rose has managed to expand upon archaic literature on the topic of improvisation—offering a fresh perspective that will be of use to both nonacademic and academic readers. Throughout the book, Rose and his panel of contributors offer the reader their wealth of experience and diverse perspectives on the topic of free improvisation and manage to integrate a method of inquiry into free improvisation that draws from a lens of phenomenology (focusing upon and interpreting participants’ experiences [idiographic] rather than seeking an aggregate of opinion across a larger sample). Within the various chapters, Rose has also managed to embrace improvisation’s unique relationship with learning and how, at the same time, constructs within education can be resistant to the modes of creative, collaborative, and embodied learning that improvisation presents. The way in which the concept of improvisation becomes constructed is centrally important as Rose has defined its role in practice, in education, and elsewhere, whilst also elucidated the potential of improvisation to remain the primary focus throughout the writing.'

-- Brian Jude De Lima, Journal of Radio & Audio Media