Expanding Comfort Zones: An Improvisation Curriculum for Applied Studios

Educator resources

Join Dr. Jeff Snedeker, Professor of Horn at Central Washington University, for this LIVE webinar that provides an example of how improvisation can be integrated into applied study in a broad sense. It will address obstacles experienced by students who do not have the traditional opportunities to improvise (e.g., a middle school or high school French horn player), and then provide a sequential, progressive curricular approach that encourages all students and their teachers to walk together on a path to wider personal expression and freedom to just play. The improvisation skills addressed are not confined to jazz styles; this webinar will first address improvisation in a general sense and then show how jazz styles can be included. This webinar is directed at all teachers, but especially applied teachers who are concerned about how improvisation can be included in applied study.

 

Plus a Q & A with the live audience.

 

A presentation from the Jazz Education Research and Practice Journal, a publication of the Jazz Education Network.

 

charlotte lang

Swiss/Dutch saxophonist Charlotte Lang was born in 1996 in Basel and studied the bachelor and master program at the JAZZCAMPUS Basel under the guidance of Domenic Landolf and Daniel Blanc. She is currently studying the Master of Music in Global Jazz at the Berklee College of Music in Boston under the artistic direction of Danilo Pérez. In addition she is part of Terri Lyne Carrington’s Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.

 

From 2015 to 2018, Charlotte she was a member of the Swiss National Youth Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Christian Muthspiel. Since 2020, she became a member of the German National Youth Jazz Orchestra (Bundesjazzorchester Deutschland), under the direction of Niels Klein and Ansgar Striepens. She also plays is the Austrian FJO (Frauen Jazz Orchester→Women Jazz Orchestra of Austria).

 

In 2021, Charlotte founded her own Quintet the „Charlotte Lang Group“, for what she is composing, arranging and booking. In the fall 2023, her first album will be recorded and hopefully released by a renowned label.

 

Charlotte plays in the “Swiss Jazz Orchestra” and the “Zurich Jazz Orchestra”, the two professional Big Bands of Switzerland.

Charlotte recently got the unique opportunity to write a monthly blog for the Swiss Jazz & Blues Magazine called JAZZTIME, to tell readers about her time at abroad and specifically her time at Berklee. Her graduate program lasts only until the summer of 2023. She hopes to stay in the United States to enlarge her network and build her musical career.