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II-V-I and Finding a Groove: Ethics in the Improvised Relationship

Scott Herder

Published: 2010-08-24

This article examines the nature of the improvised relationship as including the potentiality for each of the individuals to find a 'groove' together, and/or discord, as part of a positive process. The dependence on repertoire and fundamental structures, as discussed in Robert Faulkner and Howard Becker's "Do You Know...?: The Jazz Repertoire in Action", and the aptitude for gaining a feeling or 'groove', as in Ingrid Monson's "Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction", both inform the sense of ethics in an improvised relationship. This article uses these sources to explore the way the ethics of an improvised relationship affect ideas of aesthetic virtue.

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...partly because I know that’s the only way that we could solve a creative problem [using improvisation with children ranging in abilities] and what doesn’t work is trying to impose a template on the students who are not able to respond to that template.

– Pauline Oliveros (in working with Abilities First)