Improvisation

It’s an extraordinary world. Not so very long ago I could never have imagined I’d be keeping company – while seated right here in the UK – with piano improvisation teachers based in both South Africa and the Netherlands. There’s so much potential for good in a communicating and connected world. My friend in South Africa teaches a form of improvised ‘authentic singing’ alongside a piano improvisation that relies a great deal upon practised listening. Singing and playing today enabled at least some outlet for my frustrated sense that asking innocents fleeing from war zones to jump through well-nigh-impossible administrative hoops is – whichever way one looks at it – just fundamentally wrong. When our fears and ‘what ifs’ purport to trump the various degrees of hell from which millions are fleeing we’re in desperate need of some new improvisations. We need to be singing entirely new songs for our fellows from Ukraine – just as, one day, we might need them to sing some for us …