Tia DeNora and Raymond MacDonald
This discussion explores the relationship between improvisation and care through different but related musical ecologies: the Care for Music project which examined what happens when music becomes part of everyday residential care in a home for older people and Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra.
We consider how music can become a medium through which pleasure, meaning, beauty, connection and relationships are jointly enacted. We explore care as an improvisational practice involving listening, attunement, responsiveness, uncertainty and openness to what might happen next, while asking how improvisation itself can constitute a form of care: making space for others, negotiating difference and enabling collective action. Through stories, musical encounters and dialogue, we explore music as an art of making things possible.