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The Jazz Social was an online virtual jazz club which started during the first shutdowns for COVID in Australia from April to July 2020, now archived as ten videos on The Jazz Social YouTube channel. It was designed as an opportunity for musicians to perform and make up lost income when gigs disappeared overnight. The venture was arguably successful for a virtual jazz club: it employed 47 musicians, paying on average $116AUD for each performance; and each gig reached an average of 340 people, a considerably larger audience than a typical face-to-face jazz performance would attract. The Jazz Social gigs also brought together geographically diverse musicians and provided a platform for them to share music and discuss their experiences. With an understanding that Australia is entering a 'new COVID normal environment' which may have ongoing implications for face-to-face performance practice, this article reflects on what The Jazz Social has revealed about the nature of jazz performance, collaboration, community, virtuality, and the limitations and affordances of new technologies in producing knowledge through improvisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to the Indigenous language turn in Australian performance to suggest approaches that are epistemologically significant. We look to examples of intercultural collaboration in Australia, where a close analysis of selected practices provides opportunities for situating problems and enhancing efficacy. We focus on two community projects from Ngapartji Ngapartji [You give me something, I give you something/reciprocity], a theatre and performance-based program for language revitalisation with the Anangu people of the Central Western Desert from 2005 to 2010. The question driving the inquiry is, 'In what ways, if any, are Anangu epistemologies able to enter the performance?' In focusing on the epistemologies, we respond to the deficit of intercultural collaboration which often sees dominant paradigms privileged, even when Indigenous languages are being drawn from and revitalised. Methodologically, we bring together an interactional sociolinguistic and performance studies analytical approach to highlight dramaturgies employed and epistemologies signalled. We argue that improvisation allows Anangu epistemologies to enter the performance, proposing them as intercultural dramaturgies for Indigenous language revitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Improvisation is a fundamental skill recognised in both jazz and teaching. • Improvisation supports teacher listening and silence in their pedagogical practice. • Listening and silence can enable the teacher to engage in dialogue with their students. • Listening and silence connects the teacher to their students in their class. The valuable position of the teacher in constructivist classrooms can often be misunderstood and minimised, resulting in the teacher's role and experience being devalued in the face of the freedom of the student. This essay examines how I, a high-school English teacher from Australia, draw upon my jazz and improvisational training to create a dialogic classroom environment that balances the voice and role of the teacher with their students. Using reflective, practitioner research I examine my practice as a high-school teacher through the lens of my jazz and improvisational experience. I explain how I use improvisation, common to both jazz and teaching, as well as the skills of listening and silence to engage in dialogic exchanges with my students, reflecting upon my teaching and learn about my pedagogy. I argue that improvisation, listening, and silence allow the teacher to create a learning environment where their role and position enable them to be connected to and learn from their students. This offers one teacher's voice to a discussion that is often student-focused and in doing so adds practical experience and reflections of improvisation, and silence and listening in the high school classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on using improvisation approaches in teaching sound art, in socially-engaged art projects, and in tertiary classrooms. The author argues for an approach she calls 'resonant pedagogy' where improvisation is present in both the pedagogical design and in the content of the classes, allowing teachers/facilitators and students/participants to work together across the different disciplines that coalesce in the practice of sound art. A resonant, improvisatory approach also recognises and responds to the backgrounds, experiences, abilities, environments, and cultures of those present. Using examples from training in community settings in Australia, Northern Ireland, and Canada, and classes at the University of Regina, she suggests that incorporating improvisation might be one way to push back against the binary of 'inclusion' and 'exclusion'. In such a binary, power seems to rest with those doing the 'including'. Instead, she suggests teachers make room for unique cultural formations to thrive, in a climate marked by resonating differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers insights into using various music technologies associated with beat making culture in music therapy improvisation groups. Discussion regarding the use of music technology in music therapy practice dates back several decades, yet practical resources to help therapists implement this technology in everyday practice remains relatively limited. With the increasing centralisation of beat making in youth cultures and mainstream popular music, the use of beat making equipment is also becoming a more common part of music therapy practice. This article presents three music therapy improvisation procedures that use music technology and locate this technology within the traditions and aesthetics of beat making culture. To do so, the paper draws on our experiences setting up a beat making laboratory to trial different electronic methods in therapeutic groups and to teach music therapy graduate students basic beat making techniques for practice settings. We discuss the benefits and challenges of each procedure and present several practical recommendations. The procedures and recommendations offered do not aim to represent a comprehensive or exhaustive model of what is possible. Rather, they are intended as starting points to help practitioners imagine the multitude of possibilities that beat making and music technology can offer music therapy and the clients the discipline exists to serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the creative musical identities of pre-service music education students in the US and Australia. This work builds on prior work that has employed similar procedures with pre-service music teachers (PSMTs) in England and Finland. As in prior research, the creative identity in music (CIM) measure was utilised with both the US and Australian PSMT populations (N = 298). Items of CIM relate to music-making activities often associated with creativity in music education in the literature, including composition, improvisation, and popular music performance. Results suggest that the CIM is a valid tool for measuring creative identity as defined by the researchers. Furthermore, while both populations of pre-service teachers are similarly willing to allow for creativity in the classroom, as measured by CIM Sub-Scale #3, research findings suggest that Australian PSMTs indicate a stronger degree of creative music-making self-efficacy (p < .0001), value the areas of creative identity as measured by CIM to a significantly greater extent (p < .0001), and value the use of popular music listening/performing within the learning environment to a significantly greater extent (p < .0001) than US PSMTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective improvisation as a creative practice is intensely social, trusting, unpopular, anti-hierarchical and, for these reasons, political. Cooper describes the risks and rich rewards of improvising with fellow artists and identifies the parallels between improvising ensembles of musicians in Australia with the collectively painted protest banners of the Taring Padi Collective in Indonesia after a brief visit to Jogjakarta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thirty vocal improviser–educators from Australia (n = 15) and the United States (n = 15) were surveyed for musical background, influences and pedagogical views, and assessed for personality type using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The purpose was to both combine and compare the two groups to identify overall characteristics and cultural differences. Descriptive statistics, correlations, t-tests, and narrative summaries of influences and pedagogical views are reported. Results indicate that the combined improviser–educators (N = 30) had participated in a vocal jazz ensemble and studied a primary musical instrument for 4–6 years, had studied voice and improvisation for 2–3 years, owned extensive (40+) record collections, and practiced improvisation several hours per week. T-tests revealed significant differences between the backgrounds of the Australians and Americans, suggesting that the Australian subjects practiced improvisation, sang in nonjazz improvising ensembles, and listened to world music significantly more than the American subjects did. The NFP (intuitive, feeling, perceiving) Myers-Briggs personality type characterized more than half of the sample of improvisers. Finally, a vocal improvisation model is proposed based on the results of this study and previous studies of vocal improvisation ability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Creative activities are an integral part of music education, their place firmly established in Australia with their inclusion in the curriculum documents of all States and Territories. In much instrumental teaching, however, they are non-existent because many teachers regard the learning of notation as paramount, requiring 100% of both the lesson time and their students' practice time. As a result, activities that engage students' ears, particularly those that require a personal contribution, are relegated to the bottom of the list of desirable musical skills, if they are considered desirable at all. This article presents views on creativity in music education and its value in instrumental tuition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Jacques Lecoq's pedagogy of theatre training and considers its usefulness as an approach for secondary school drama teachers. Lecoq's principles and practice can be successfully applied in drama education to develop skills in theatrical creation and performance. The four pillars of Lecoq's integrated approach — movement, improvisation, creation and stylisation — are explored in terms of their suitability for the drama classroom. The pedagogy is seen to offer a viable alternative to the 'Stanislavski method', primarily because its theory and practice are grounded in a paradigm of embodiment rather than Cartesian dualism. The proposition that Lecoq's practice is valuable for secondary drama education is supported by the testimony of Australian Lecoq graduates who have conducted pre-service and in-service teacher training, student workshops and Theatre-in-Education programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]