There will be a concert in Studzinski tonight, but the performers don't know what they're playing yet.
The performers are students in Lecturer of Music Frank Mauceri's Improvisation 221 class, and they've spent this semester learning how to create music without traditional scores or guidelines.
While Mauceri has taught jazz ensembles and lessons at Bowdoin for eight years, the class is the first of its kind. According to Mauceri, the class is an appropriate addition to the music department's curriculum.
"We wanted to have improvisation open to more than just jazz players," he said. "The creative process of improvisation, I think, should be something that every musician should experience."
Tonight's concert will showcase the several types of improvisation the students have spent the semester studying.
"The concert's featuring a variety of different sorts of music which involve different types of improvisation in various degrees," said music major Peter McLaughlin '10. "Some of the pieces we're playing will be free improvisation, meaning freely communicative music improvised on the spot with little to no preconceived material."
Other pieces will be "open form classical compositions," according to McLaughlin, who will perform his own concert of improvised music Monday night.
"Open form music was a style of composition that arose and became popular largely among American classical composers in the 1950s and '60s" he said. "It was developed as an attempt to free music from the confines of a strict structural notated score."
Some of these pieces integrate improvisation in a more traditional sense—within a strict harmonic and structural framework—while others allow performers to make decisions entirely at their discretion during the performance.
According to Mauceri, improvisation is an important element in every tradition of music in the world other than Western classical music, and even within that tradition, improvisation is not entirely absent.
The class spent the semester learning about and trying different kinds of improvisation.
"The way the class is structured, we spend half the time reading about and discussing improvisation in various musical traditions and we spend half the classes playing and workshopping and improvising ourselves," Mauceri said.
Although the students haven't improvised on classical music, they're exploring "non-idiomatic improvisation," according to Mauceri.
"We're not trying to improvise in a particular style, but we might stipulate our own rules," he said.
The class, comprised mainly of music majors and minors, is having a good time.
"It's certainly helped me to expand my improvisational palette and has allowed me to think in new ways about music-making," McLaughlin, a drummer, said.
"It's been great," said Abriel Ferreira '10, a music major and trumpet player. "What I used to consider really out there and super experimental is now sounding more and more in the norm and I'm finding myself questioning a lot of musical boundaries."
As a classical musician, learning how to improvise has been especially eye-opening for Ferreira.
"It's really changed the way I think about music because, especially being classically trained, improvising isn't really taught or encouraged even though it's such a huge part of being a musician," she said. "No matter what kind of music you play, knowing how to improvise is a very valuable skill and will only make you a better musician."
The concert, which will include a variety of pieces intentionally written by composers intentionally for musicians to improvise, will have some untraditional aspects.
"The concert will feature some music which pushes the boundaries of traditional music making and incorporates theatrical elements," McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin and Ferreira declined to expand on what kind of theatrical elements will be incorporated into the show.
"So much about improvisation is about the process of discovery, and so we don't want to take away from that," Ferreira said.
The final piece on the program will be a conducted improvisation in which Mauceri will direct students using a system of gestures that has been previously developed.
"It's a really specific system of conducting. He can tell different groups and different musicians to do different things at different times," McLaughlin said.
The concert will be performed tonight at 7:30 at Kanbar Auditorium in Studzinski Recital Hall. It is free and open to the public. McLaughlin's concert will be at 7:30 p.m. on Monday in Studzinski.