The Festival of New

This class explores how performing musicians coordinate and improvise with each other on musical material, timing, expressivity, rhythm, and other musical features; how collaboration varies in different genres and forms of music-making; and how musical collaboration connects with the ways people coordinate and improvise in other performing arts and in other arenas of life—in spontaneous casual conversations, creative group projects, business meetings, moving in crowds, and more. This class is informed by findings in psychology, linguistics, and ethnography as well as the lived experience of working musicians. It also considers how collaborative roles include audiences as well as performers. Lectures include live performances and demonstrations as well as discussion of published research, and assignments require students to participate in and analyze collaborative processes systematically. The course is designed to be useful for students with and without previous musical training.