Music as Cultural Diplomacy: Using Improvisation as a Creative Tool

Musical improvisation is a complex form of creative human expression. In this book, Sabina Rakcheyeva explores the logical outcomes of performance, relating them to existing theories and expanding those theories with new findings. Rakcheyeva begins with an examination of the attributes of musical improvisation, how it is practised, its logic, the creativity of the process and the role of the audience in performance. The book’s second half is devoted to a description of a performance-based research project involving the author, a violinist, and members of her ensemble. A self-referent endeavour involving cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary analyses, investigates aspects of improvisation in recent musical practice, juxtaposing this onto the author’s own performance experience and elaborating, in particular, on how improvisation encapsulates processes of imagination, creation, and collaboration among musicians from different music backgrounds. Taking the music performance to a next stage, the author explores the ways of how musical collaboration as a tool of public engagement can contribute to promoting understanding and preventing and resolving conflict,in a search of methodology for improving the effectiveness of current practices.