I wanted to investigate how this form of free improvisation would work for our classical voice students and whether group tuition is an appropriate model. This form of music-making places great demand on the participants’ listening and communication skills, and I was curious about how it would work out when they did not have printed music to relate to.

Although A and B had done some improvisation previously, none of the four had worked on improvisation using this particular method before. Nor had they worked in a group of this size (4 students). Some had received obligatory instruction in improvisation at the start of their studies, but that was in a much bigger group coached by jazz teacher.

My initial idea was to have a few one-to-one lessons with them first to practise some of the basic principles. For various reasons that never happened, so we went straight for the group lessons. This turned out just fine, and doing all the exercises as a group proved to be unproblematic. The students were quicker to acquire the skills than I had expected. They were undaunted by the task and put their creativity to good use right from the start. Communication was good, they responded well to each other and were good at listening. The fact that they already knew each other was of course a big advantage.