Product Description

This book is about the inner sources of spontaneous creation. It is about where art in the widest sense comes from. It is about why we create and what we learn when we do. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms. Free Play is directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honor, and strengthen their own creative powers. It integrates material from a wide variety of sources among the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity. Filled with unusual quotes, amusing and illuminating anecdotes, and original metaphors, it reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed or obscured by certain unavoidable facts of life, and how finally it can be liberated-how we can be liberated-to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice. The whole enterprise of improvisation in life and art, of recovering free play and awakening creativity, is about being true to ourselves and our visions. It brings us into direct, active contact with boundless creative energies that we may not even know we had.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96699 in Books
• Published on: 1993-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From the Author
Free Play Web Site
See author's web page: http://www.freeplay.com and the web page on Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art: http://www.freeplay.com/fpbook.htm

Customer Reviews

Placing improvisation amongst the primary creative functions
Here is a book that places the act of improvisation amongst the primary creative functions in both art and life. Although this isnÕt a technical text-book, it more than compensates for the paucity of insight generally offered within the plethora of improvisation manuals that catalogue musical devices in long and over-extensive lists, and a jazz education industry that is generally concerned with the less problematic and tangible aspects of music making. Here the author explores the essential nature of the impulse to improvise, placing it alongside the primary creative function in life common to us all. The writing is thoroughly researched and well referenced but most importantly, Stephen Nachmanovitch writes with the authority born of experience. This is no phoney New Age pot-boiler, more a rigourously researched and profound examination into one of the sacred arts - improvising. I recommend it to any artist or interested creative mind.

Simon Purcell Professor of Jazz Improvisation and Piano Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, UK

Reflective
For me this book was an excellent reflective study on the arts. It goes into the human relationship with the suggestive muse and how from that we go about creating inspirational works.
The book itself is a work of art and is a pleasure to read.