Playing in the Present Moment

It's a funny thing playing music. It's just music, and yet we want to play in the best way we can. We hear other people play and are inspired, but we don't want to play like them, we want to play like us. We want to find our own voice.
And learning the art of improvisation in music is a way in which players can find their voice, their vocabulary and tease out little technical issues which could do with some attention.
Last week I was fortunate to spend 4 days with a small group of fiddle players learning the art of improvisation with Peter Knight. Peter played for many years with Steeleye Span and currently tours with his trio Gigspanner. His own journey in music was significantly altered when he met and played with master of improvisation, saxophonist Trevor Watts. Improvisation has changed the way Peter plays and creates. His courses are an opportunity for other musicians to give attention to their own relationship with music and learn the valuable art of responding in the moment to what other people are playing. Such a valuable thing to learn which then informs everything else they play.
From time to time we hear people say they want to learn to live in the present moment, and being in a room with four fiddle players making music that is based on nothing other than what each of them play there and then, is for me a way of doing just that.

Christine