When I was seven years old I started to play the piano. It didn’t take long before I started to compose and improvise. However, this wasn’t encouraged at the time. I quit, and from then on I only played music that was composed by others. This satisfied me for many years: reading notes was very easy for me, and there’s a lot of beautiful music to play! That’s how I passed my state exam classical piano.

Then, somewhere between my twenty-fifth and thirtieth,  something started gnawing inside me. It didn’t satisfy me anymore to only play other people’s music. I started to long for my own musical story. That yearning started to grow day by day.  I started to notice there was something inside me that wanted to be let out. Following that desire made me go my own way, I started to improvise.   

Initially this wasn’t easy. I was already pretty advanced as a classical pianist – but my improvisations sounded like a was a total beginner! Still, I wanted to persevere. I gave my students simple improvisation exercises and carried it out with them. Alongside my students I learned to improvise. I made it a habit to, even if it was only for a brief moment, to improvise. I started to play with other improvisational musicians and talked endlessly with them about  music and improvisation. That’s how I was able to discover and learn a lot.

I have now been teaching improvisation for more than twenty-five years. I’ve seen hundreds of pupils and participants flourish and achieve happiness by entering the world of improvisation. The classes turned out to have a wonderful side effect: the freedom, gained by improvising, often has an effect on our daily life. Every day I see how happy and whole people can become by improvising. I wish that you too will experience that joy many times over. I’d be glad to help you achieve that!