- If we think we do not deserve something, it will not matter how hard we try - conviction will be lacking and our desires will fail to materialise. So say the gurus of Quantum Resonance theory, the new wave of the New Age philosophy.
- I believe in my powers of improvisation because for me the act of shaping music in real time is (or can be) arguably the most authentic experience (and I have many others) of my existence as a musician. I have faced all the bugbears which told me that improvisation is by its nature of little worth and doomed to failure as a compositional technique.
- It is an understandable judgement, to conclude that it is not possible, at one sitting and without forethought, to achieve genuine expression to the point of communicating in a valuable way to an audience. We are more or less programmed to think this way, which is why comparatively few people dare to challenge this conception. Hand in hand with this idea comes a more general one, that even interpreting other people's music must be fully planned in advance.
- To face this attitude head-on we need to believe in ourselves, and, just as importantly, to affirm the power of the Present - which is, after all, the only moment in which we can truly act. It is my belief that the true expressive power of music is deeply connected to this sense of the Present, either as an act of interpretation or as an act of spontaneous creation.
- For this reason, I believe that the practice of improvisation, far from being simply the poor relation of composition, can play a vitally important role in musical life, and can actually help us to reconstruct our primary relationship to sound. This is something all of us have, and no amount of negative comparisons with others ("he/she plays better, faster, more expressively," etc.) will rob us of the right to be comfortable with our own creations.
