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Classical Improvisation with Karst de Jong

Updated: Dec 10, 2019


2:16 What’s your musical background?

3:20 Do you have Absolute or Perfect Pitch?

4:04 Were you always experimenting and improvising from the beginning?

4:48 What sort of things would you improvise?

5:36 What kind of music were you listening to growing up?

6:26 Did you receive a pretty standard approach to learning classical repertoire?

7:10 How many years did you have lessons? How many teachers?

7:57 What’s it like to grow up in Holland, musically?

8:59 Did you keep your improvising going into your teenage years? Did you also play jazz?

9:58 What was your understanding of theory growing up?

11:19 What was your music theory training like?

13:22 Did you agree with all the theory that you were taught?

14:05 What did your teachers do differently from conventional teachers?

15:03 How does the mind work differently in improvisation?

15:56 When did that insight click for you?

17:31 How do you get kids to integrate theory when they’ve never really thought about it?

19:26 What are the common mistakes students make when trying to learn to improvise?

20:03 What would students be trying to hear from you in call and response?

20:28 How would students know what would be the right response, in call and response?

20:47 Would a pianist play two hands?

21:34 As an example, what’s a challenge for another instrument?

22:16 After call and response, what’s next for students?

23:03 More on transposition

23:18 How about changing from the major to the minor?

23:30 Is there any implied bass to the melodic ideas you are playing?

24:21 Do string players imagine the bass while playing?

25:20 Are the counterpoint rules still in place during live playing?

26:05 What advice can you give to other teachers who want to run a classical improvisational model

27:34 What would you do in a 1 hour class with an ensemble?

28:34 Can you give an example of working on 1 idea

29:54 Talk about your new approach to harmonic analysis

32:56 Why did you choose the minor 3rd as a strong progression?

33:31 Is that the same with C to Eb?

34:46 How effective has it been with students?

35:40 How does someone learn music theory with the goal of practical composition and improvisation

37:28 How does this change your perception of traditional harmony

38:01 If a parent wanted to start their child’s music journey correctly, what should they do?

39:36 How should somebody look at a piece they’ve played, break it down and play around with it?

40:25 Would you analyze late romantic music with your new method of analysis?

41:09 What materials someone can check out online about improvisation in classical music?

43:05 Talking about YST Classified where Karst plays 3 jazz standards in a classical virtuoso style

44:09 Were those performances completely improvised?

44:45 Do you still maintain the basso continuo?

45:13 Do you have to maintain the jazz harmony?

46:12 How do you improvise in the style of Bach?

46:48 What kind of ideas do you commonly use?

48:00 Is counterpoint the basis of it all and what’s the best way to learn it?

48:52 What counterpoint resources can you recommend?

49:29 How would we start introducing improvisation into earlier music education?

50:30 How has the culture around classical improvisation changed over the last few decades?

52:18 How does the audience respond to improvisation vs standard repertoire?

53:52 Does the audience listen closer when the performer is improvising?

54:47 What do you see for the future of classical music?

56:02 Wrapping Up

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