Grigoriy Konson speaks with jazz pianist Daniel Kramer about developing specific musical thinking in the process of teaching both academic and jazz musicians. Using rhythmic patterns of different jazz styles as a basis for jazz improvisation training, Daniel Kramer offers a unique methodology for analyzing any musical text, which he interprets as a multi-layered semantic and intonational-rhythmic whole, explained by analogy with a conversational message. Guided by the styles, intonations, syntax, and "dialects" of the musical "language," the learners of jazz improvisation acquire both conditional freedom from musical text and the skill of deeper and more professional comprehension of its meaning and structure. The improvisation skill thus develops what Kramer calls "stepwise, horizontal thinking" and enriches the artist's musical vocabulary and individual style. To get the reader acquainted with jazz as a specific phenomenon, Kramer defines the fundamental elements of jazz culture, which reveal the interrelation between "beat," "swing," and "drive," thus forming the idea of distinctive jazz aesthetics. As a result, similarities, traditions, and, on the other hand, significant differences between how the theme tune is developing in classics and jazz are rethought. The author's unique method for studying and analyzing musical compositions together with the students solves a whole range of critical objectives. The text is literally reconstructed anew; the musical discourse-context is recreated; and within it, the linguistic and symbolic nature of music is manifested, and the meaning of a particular piece, the "dialect" of a particular composer becomes available for the analysis and reproduction. Here, the rhythmic patterns are an accentuation instrument and a musical message form, an outline, within which the performer's consciousness is playing with its individual ideas. When learning a language, one should master the alphabet before constructing phrases; in the same way, musical students gradually move from studying the basic structures to working with phraseology and "syntax." The student and the musical piece enter into a dialogue, which is completely different from the simple reading of notes and applying musical canons. In this dialogue, the young musician acquires the necessary degree of freedom from the text while merging with its structural principles. In addition to his traditional work with students, Kramer introduces his methods among his colleagues, teachers of music schools in different cities of Russia. Regardless of the genres they prefer, teaching improvisation is necessary for all musicians, for it has considerable theoretical and heuristic power and represents a unique paradigm of thinking.
