Intro to Improvisation Group Class

IMPROVISATION WITH STEPHANIE NILLES

Thursdays from December 4, 2025 to February 5, 2026
5:00-6:00 pm in the LAM Recital Hall (*no class Dec. 25 or Jan 1)

60-minute engaging group classes for students ages 12-18 with intermediate proficiency on any instrument.

Tuition is $240 for this 8-week course. Contact us for information on financial assistance.

Are you embarrassed when your grandma says, “Play me a little something!”, only to freeze up because it’s been a few months since your last recital and none of your current pieces are memorized? Do you desperately want to join your friends’ garage band, but you’re hesitant to show up to practice, since none of your friends can read music and you wouldn’t know what to play? Do you feel awkward or maybe even a little mortified when your neighbor requests you play “Happy Birthday,” because: what note do I start on? In what key? Do you have the sheet music? Is your biggest fear for your upcoming concerto competition having a memory slip, because if you get lost, you’d have no idea how to find your way back? In Intro to Improvisation, we’ll address all of the above concerns and aim to demystify the art of improvised music.

Improv is not just for jazz. Music has existed as lullaby, a form of ritual, entertainment, and social gathering for long before the written language. Even if your interests lie squarely inside classical music, most classical musicians practiced performance, composition, and improvisation in equal measure until fairly recently. (Did you know that concerto cadenzas were originally meant to be crafted by the performer?) In the interest of fostering a holistic music education, we will use this class to get you “off the page.” (We “play” and “hear” music, after all!) We will delve into free/open improvisation and the avant-garde; bridge the gap between music theory and improv by using chordal and scale theory to improvise over particular musical forms, from the blues to American Songbook lead sheets; dip our toes into improvised film scoring and Foley artistry; and use ear training and eurhythmics exercises (some of them very fun games!) to transfer musical focus from the page to the ear. At the end of our course, I aim to see you able to charm Grandma with your own concoction of music, make up your own part at band practice, play the melodies of popular songs (from nursery rhymes to your most-streamed favorites) by ear/by request, and find your way out of a memory jam without losing your cool. We’ll have fun, we’ll be silly, we’ll get frustrated, and above all, we’ll learn a lot.

Meet your instructor Stephanie Nilles