Excuse me, I find this rather confusing. I did not post the message at the head of this thread as a new thread but as a reply to a message in another thread. The title is not mine, either. One point of the message in its original context was to leave open the chance to mention that another long-standing (though no longer) member of the Arditti Quartet, Rohan de Saram, is a very fine improviser, having worked as a member of AMM for a few years.

The mention of Menuhin is very much apposite. He insisted on improvisation playing an important part in the curriculum at the Menuhin School, precisely because he had never been encouraged to develop such skills in his own youth.

No John., that's not really good enough. Moderation should be done with care, and only when really necessary. You did not even take the trouble to alert readers of this new thread, which you started with my message, that its initial message had been moved, out of context, from elsewhere. Neither did you trouble to drop me a quick line advising me of your action. Sure they could have discovered where the thread had come from by clicking on the link above the quote which I contiued, but how many are likely to do that?

Vengerov took six months out of his career to study improvisation with Didier Lockwood. Indeed he is a very accomplished improvisor, and my raising of the topic of the improvising abilities of another violinist who had just been mentioned was in no way off topic to a thread dealing with Vengerov. It would not have taken much to discover such connections for yourself. Please don't start taking leaves out of the BBCi book on moderation.

Please also note that, so far, your message on the Vengerov thread, announcing that you had been so clever in moving mine, remains the final messge in that thread.

O.K. John. Let's leave it at that. I was supposed to be getting some shut-eye after a trying day. I think I will listen to an old Radio 3 broadcast of a Vengerov recital to relax a bit. The toccata in d minor (attrib. Bach), some Schedrin and a couple of Ysaye sonatas. Hmm, now I Google the Ysaye, I see he recorded pretty much the same programme for EMI. Might get that.

Hang on chaps, that's not how it's supposed to work! Don't you know you're supposed to go at it hammer and tongs for a couple of hours yet racking up moddings on both sides right up until the curfew when you lurch grumpily into bed and then remember exactly the riposte you were looking for but then by the time the boards open in the morning you've forgotten not only the riposte but the whole incident?

Oh no, hang on, that was somewhere else.

Anyway, er, improvisation. Never been terribly good at it myself. But sometimes I find myself having to do it with people who are even worse at it. Oh my goodness that's bad. Paddling in the shallows of other people's imaginations while they crank out one cliché after another and never let you get a note in edgeways. And then they tell you afterwards how liberating they found the whole thing and how you didn't really seem to be involved and maybe improvisation's not really your thing?

I didnot know Vengerov took time off to take lessons and learn to improvise. There are several clips about him that I have not seen yet, but no improvisation.

marbleflugel, it is such a good idea to teach improvisation and composition to instrumentalists. Bach could improvise for hours and in his time musicians had to produce their own repertoire to perform.
Bach's melodies are indeed swing. They are not pretty melodies. I don't know people that you mention in your post (Bobby McFerrin and Kurt Elling), but people here will know.

if 'improvisation' means 'fistfulls of wrong notes' i'm your man.

http://www.rajesh-mehta.com/sqlindex.php5?chapter=archive

Re. Eddie Prevost on classical musicians, I don't think his classical training has been an insurmountable barrier for John Tilbury, and he hasn't let that comment of Eddie's drive him out of AMM.