I'm Joey Chang and I am a second year masters at the Juilliard School in piano
performance
I started playing the piano when I was five years old I pursued
playing classical piano composing and improvising
this French suite is rife with counterpoints and decisions about
ornamentations and melodies to bring out Joey is an extremely accomplished
pianist
so he sees what possibilities there are there is an
artistic imagination a freshness an ability to improvise
however detailed and rigorous the page of music is it's always possible to be
in profit ory and that quality is what makes the difference
I try to encourage students to imagine that the music is a conversation in
which you don't know what's going to happen from note to note
when I give recitals I have always made a point of including an improvisation
segment to ask an audience for suggestions.
I'm thinking of row row row
your boat as a suggestion from an audience member
a lot of what I feel in improvisation is to take the known stretching it
somewhere else as a classical musician our craft is about learning a form and
learning a syntax a lot of musicians come out of school following a sort of
path but I'm dedicating my studies to interdisciplinary collaborative and
experimental ways of creation
towards the end of my senior year and undergrad I began to have questions
about the reason I did music from there I began to see improvisation as a
philosophy and a way of presenting music that was empowering
as a solo pianist you're doing a lot of work on yourself by yourself a lot of
art making is a collaborative effort it's the mixing of voices that usually
creates something different it's a long-lost art form I think improvisation
within the context of Western European classical music that a lot of it was
born from improvisation it's kind of know taking back of the tradition
there's something about music everybody can feel that's I think at the heart of
why I do it and why I love it