I’m looking at a photograph of Oliver. Oliver lives in Brooklyn NY. In the photograph Oliver is lying on his back in a shady spot in Prospect Park. The sun is dappling the tree limbs that hang above his head and he is staring upward in utter fascination and amazement at the light and trees above him....

What has always fascinated me about jazz is that my identity as an improviser is unconditionally bound to the identity of those I am improvising with. By identity I mean what Heidegger would refer to as Dasein- the manifestation of my potential to “be” in the world. Jazz is a music that is phenomenological...

“IT AIN’T WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW THAT GETS YOU IN TROUBLE. IT’S WHAT YOU KNOW FOR SURE THAT JUST AIN’T SO.” -Mark Twain Jazz is predicated on a very unique type of listening. It’s a listening style that isn’t new but one that requires some explanation. It is kind of listening that is open...

Using Jazz music as a platform for conversations about organizational improvisation has the power to bring about a fusion in “ways of knowing.” In much the same way that the polyrhythm combines two rhythmic entities sustaining the integrity of each identity while forming a new entity of...

Improvisation . . . What do you imagine? Jazz? Stand up comedy? Experimental theater? Modern dance? If you were asked to improvise in the moment what would you think? Probably your first thought would be fear, ooooh no- not me. I’m not going there. A lot of us imagine improvisation to be some sort...

In 1975 the Sociologist Rollo May published a series of essays about the nature of creativity. He begins with these words: We are living at a time when one age is dying and the new age is not yet born. A choice confronts us. Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic?...

in this space time has texture my thoughts do not rush I notice my heart   in this space I am able to reason and to tease apart the strands of epiphany   in this space I feel the momentum of others in balance with the trees, the grass, the rain   on the first day coyote came to check me out he...