I have the privilege to play in a jazz ensemble with a group of students. We meet twice a week, play jazz classics and improvise. In the process we hone our playing skills, and we experience the joy of making music together. We recently played at the homecoming celebration at our university. This was an impromptu performance that came together in just a few days’ time.
I am the professor playing with a group of students who are more than 40 years younger than I am, and the last thing I want is to dominate in this group. It was my impulse to plan our performance, to determine ahead of time what we would play, who would solo, and then to practice so that we could do the best possible job. My fellow players had different ideas. “Let’s make a long list of songs that we like, and during the concert we will figure it out what we will play. For the solos we can communicate as we are playing.” This was not the approach I was inclined to take, but one of the great things of playing in a group is that this is a game of give and take, things sometimes work in ways other than that you would have chosen or planned, and there are surprises along the way when that happens. These surprises can be very pleasant.
This is exactly what happened. On stage we figured out what to play next, and as each of us was ready to wrap up a solo we just looked around who seemed keen to go next. We were in the flow of making music, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We just jumped into the performance, and as we did so we also jumped out of our comfort zone to discover that there is joy in just giving ourselves over to pure experience. We played well, but we also had moments of confusion and a sprinkling of unplanned dissonants.
What this experience exemplified was the tension between control and spontaneity. It was my inclination to plan and control, and to be well prepared. My friends on the ensemble had little interest in such planning. They understood better than I did that there is joy and creativity in unplanned spontaneity. In decades of running projects, I had forgotten this beneficial aspect of just going with the flow, to enjoy being in the process and let myself be guided by pure creativity.
Striking the balance between control and spontaneity is an interesting challenge. What is your inclination for aiming for either control or spontaneity? Does this depend on the context? You can think, for example, of work, sports, art, travel, and personal relations. What would happen if you would strike the balance between control and spontaneity in a different way? Are you willing to try out a different approach than you are taking now?