Improvisation in everyday professional life as a musician - a significant resource

Contributors

Program

Improvisation is understood as the art of drawing from the moment and dealing creatively with the unforeseen. In the artistic-musical discourse, we refer improvisation primarily to the musical performance itself. However, with regard to the musician as a person, improvisation can take on a further meaning, namely the ability to engage with unforeseen demands. With this understanding of improvisation - or rather "improvisational ability" as a personal competence - the careers of musicians can be examined in terms of the demands they face in their profession, the resources they need to cope well with them and the role played by the ability to improvise. The questions will be discussed against the background of research on personality in musicians and on the basis of case studies.

Prof. Dr. med. dr. phil. Claudia Spahn is Professor of Musicians' Medicine and heads the Freiburg Institute for Musicians' Medicine, College of Music and Freiburg University Medical Center. As a specialist in psychosomatic medicine and a systematic musicologist, her research interests include the psychology of musicians and resilience.

Prof. Dr. Anna Immerz is Professor of Music Physiology at the Freiburg Institute for Musicians' Medicine at the Freiburg College of Music. She teaches music physiology there and researches practice-oriented topics such as communication in ensemble playing and health in music students.

The lecture is part of the FZM lecture series "Improvising: Spontaneous Creativity in Art and Everyday Life".

In the summer semester of 2026, the Freiburg Research and Teaching Center(FZM) is organizing a lecture series on the topic of improvisation from various specialist perspectives and facets. In addition to ten lectures by members of the FZM and guests, which will take place on Wednesdays in the lecture hall of the University's Musicology Department, events with improvisational-musical performances or cross-genre performances are planned on five Monday evenings at the College of Music, two of which are part of the FZM event series "musik + wissen".

Here you can find the brochure (pdf) (this file is not barrier-free) for the public lecture series with all individual dates.

The Freiburg Research and Teaching Center (FZM) is a joint institution of the College of Music and the University campus Freiburg with the aim of mutual networking in music-related research and teaching.