Groton students embrace the freedom of improvisation

Improvisation has always been an important part of Music Department Head Mary Ann Lanier PhD’s development as a musician. This fall she was happy to share her love for the craft with Groton School students through a workshop and free concert featuring conductor/violinist David Rudge PhD.

“In my work at Groton, I have incorporated improvisation into my work with students,” said Dr. Lanier, who earned her Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Education degree from Boston University this past March. “I gave a chapel talk in the winter of 2023 that was based on my work and that included several segments of free musical improvisation including with the entire school singing. When I have performed at Groton, I have often included free improvisation pieces and, in January of 2024, I gave a recital that was all freely improvised.”

Dr. Lanier first encountered improvisation as a master’s student at BU, when she volunteered to improvise as part of an Opera Scenes class workshop. From then on, she would incorporate short sections of improvisation into educational opera performances she would do. In addition, she performed and recorded with NOTE (NewOperaTheatreEnsemble), a professional free improvisation vocal group.

Later, Dr. Lanier’s doctoral studies focused on free improvisation, and included a study at Groton School of six student chamber musicians.

 

“I led four workshops in which I approached the teaching of improvisation influenced by the ideas of philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin,” she explained. “As I was developing my approach, I discovered the work of the late (cellist and Grammy Award–winning creative musician) David Darling and the organization he founded called Music for People. Darling believed that every person is musical and has the right to self-expression through music.”

 

It was at Music for People’s week-long Art of Improvisation course that Dr. Lanier met David Rudge, an award-winning conductor of opera and symphonic music, who leads clinics and playshops on improvisation in the U.S. and internationally for all age groups. She enjoyed working with and learning from him, and the pair soon hatched a plan to have Dr. Rudge come to Groton in fall 2022 to work with students to help them embrace the freedom of self-expression possible in music. An emergency prevented that appearance, which was rescheduled for this past September.

 

Dr. Rudge’s improvisation workshop started, as one might imagine, with freeform playing and singing. Participants were invited to pick an instrument from a pile in the middle of the Gammons Recital Hall, then formed a semi-circle and began to play. Dr. Rudge said he had just spent two days with a 1-year-old, which was great preparation for the task at hand.

“She wasn’t thinking,” he said of his young friend. “She didn’t care. She didn’t care if she fell off the couch. She was just doing her thing. 

“Can we return to what we were like before we went to school, before people started telling us what to do all the time?” he added. “Anything is open. You can’t make a mistake. You can’t do it wrong.” 

Dr. Lanier then led a call-and-response vocal session that quickly got loud and loose. 

“Practicing free improvisation in music can help trained musicians in any style to put expression and creation first,” she said later. “Sometimes training causes musicians to concentrate on avoiding mistakes and a narrow idea of what music is, rather than using music and technique as a vehicle for creation, connection with others and self-expression. When people practice free improvisation, people of all skill levels, even beginners, can make music together.”

 

The workshop and performance were worth the wait.

 

“I think many students saw the possibilities of greater freedom and connection through music,” said Dr. Lanier. “In the workshops and especially in the concert, student and faculty participation went beyond my expectations. In the concert, the entire audience played rhythms, sang melodies, and generated fantastic energy.

 

“Our students are so capable and often so focused on getting things right, that opportunities to create something of their own that no one judges and to be encouraged to play the unexpected and what some might consider ‘the wrong notes’ can be cathartic,” she added. “Most importantly, everyone involved was encouraged to be themselves and keep it simple—to be themselves as they were coming together with others.”

For the concert the following night, Drs. Lanier and Rudge were joined by marimbist/percussionist Sarah Tenney for a once-in-a-lifetime, unrepeatable program that kicked off Groton School’s free Edward B. Gammons Concert Series. The series continues with four performances in 2025: