Campus will see its very first Improvisation Festival in just a couple of weeks—from March 27 through 29. The festival—sponsored by the Brandeis Arts Council and coordinated by Prof. Tom Hall (MUS) who is serving as the festival’s artistic director—will bring artists from both inside and outside the University.

During its three days, the festival will feature 20 different events, demonstrating an array of improvisation across artistic fields. Many of the improvisation performances are music-related—artistic director Hall is a musician and music instructor himself—but, in an interview with the Justice, Hall said that he strove to incorporate other fields into the festival, such as painting and theater.

Hall also spoke about the origins of the festival in the interview. In spring 2013, Hall was engaged in talks with chair of the Music department Prof. Yu-Hui Chang (MUS) and Senior Academic Administrator Mark Kagan about coordinating an improvisation festival.

Hall has a deep background in improvisation—he has led the Brandeis Improv Collective for almost 20 years and, in 2012, he created a video series (ImprovLive 365) in which he made a video every day for a year highlighting different aspects of improvisation and engaging in dialogues with improvisational artists. In the spring of 2014, he pitched the idea for an improvisation festival to the Brandeis Arts Council, a group under the Office of the Arts that allocates funds to arts programming on campus. They awarded him the grant.

“Something that I’ve always wanted to do is bring a lot of improvisatory actors like this to Brandeis and also, then, sort of connect all the different people at Brandeis who do improvisation,” said Hall. So he reached out to his network of art colleagues and started petitioning them to join the festival. Most of the guest artists are local, although there is one out-of-towner—percussionist Milford Graves.

Graves will be giving the keynote address, will perform for the festival’s inaugural concert and will be giving a solo percussion performance.

Slosberg Music Center will be the hub of most of the events, but there are two events elsewhere on campus—one in the Shapiro Campus Center and one at the Rose Art Museum. Prof. Peter Kalb (FA) will be leading a discussion at the Rose on improvisational painting.

“I really wanted to include visual arts. And it’s an interesting thing because people don’t think of painting or visual arts as being particularly improvisational, but a lot of artists will tell you that they are. And artists have different processes, and some work very improvisationally, and some work not-that-improvisationally,” said Hall.

The Shapiro Campus Center will hold Sound Line, an event that will feature artist Lennie Peterson as he improvises to music, creating large-scale pen and ink portraits of famous musicians based on the music. Hall will be improvising on the saxophone, and bassist Marty Ballou will accompany him.

One of the less traditional improvisation presentations will be a dance party. There will be video games in the lobby of Slosberg for attendees to play. “I think the idea of people dancing to music is absolutely an improvisation. And that whole thing of people getting together and having fun is one of the most wonderful improvisations,” said Hall.

Hall also says that he believes that digital technology is a form of improvisation—that is, we improvise on the Internet as well as when we play video games.

Hall spoke about what he was looking for in the festival’s guests. “All people I know are really good at what they do. They are all really passionate about what they do. And they’re all really open to exploring improvisation and creativity.”