Session One Friday 19 December 2025 6:00pm
Session Two Saturday 20 December 2025 4:30pm
£8 | 8 places only per session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets
Lecture with demonstrations. Duration : approximately one hour
“What we know is constrained by interpretive frameworks, which, of course, limit our thinking: what we can know will be determined by the kinds of questions we learn to ask.”
Michelle Z. Rosaldo[1]
Improvising is something we all do in life, to a greater or lesser extent, and also in art and music… but wittingly or not we may fall into unhelpful or limiting patterns in our improvising – what are they and how could we avoid them?
Some creators adopt improvisation as one strategy among many; for others it becomes the primary focus of their practice. What is the relationship between improvisation and control? Which comes first, awareness or improvisation?
What does it mean to give oneself over completely to improvisation? Is it even possible to do so? What does it require of us, and where does it get us? How may we use it to extend our selves and break open our assumptions around what we think we know about art, about our own identities and those of others, and about how we relate to each other?
If we don’t continually attempt this, what happens to our improvising?
This talk draws on Kraabel’s work-in-progress, ‘If it works, stop. If it doesn’t work, do it again’, a long text on improvisation.
[1] M. Z. Rosaldo, The use and abuse of anthropology: reflections on feminism and cross-cultural understanding. Signs, Spring 1980, vol. 5, no. 3, University of Chicago Press, pp. 389-417.
Caroline Kraabel is a London-based improviser.
In 2022 Kraabel founded a large improvising group made up of all sorts of women, non-binary, and transgender improvisers: ONe_Orchestra New. Since then they have been exploring improvisation and difference in monthly labs and regular performances (recent release, Live at the Vortex July 2024). Kraabel’s soundfilm, London 26 and 28 March 2020: imitation: inversion won the 2021 Ivor Novello Award for Best Sound Art Composer.
In 2024 Kraabel received a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England to work on a long text about improvisation in life, art, and music.
Other active groups: duo with John Edwards (double bass) – Soundtrips70 tour and 2024 CD, Sparrow Dance. Duo with recorder player Teresa Hackel, Durst Dust released 2025. Duo with Zhuyang Liu (guzheng). Duo with percussionist Bex Burch. 2024 CD release of Still Dancing CD with Daniel Thompson (acoustic guitar) and Max Reed (dance). Duo with cellist Khabat Abas – Five Communiqués released 2023; Transitions Trio (with Charlotte Hug and Maggie Nicols, CD release: On Dizziness); duo with Pat Thomas (CD release, whats wrong, August 2023).
Kraabel has performed and recorded with many other improvisers, including Robert Wyatt (CD, LAST1 LAST2), Louis Moholo, Cleveland Watkiss, Hyelim Kim, Annie Lewandowski (duo CD, In The Garden City), Susan Alcorn (duo CD, Giving Out), Mark Sanders and Veryan Weston (trio CD, Playtime; duo CD on Emanem with Weston, Five Shadows), Mariá Portugal, Neil Metcalfe (duo CD, March), Crystabel Riley, Pei Ann Yeoh, Charlotte Keeffe, Alex Ward, Cath Roberts, Dee Byrne, Damsel Elysium, Chris Corsano.
Radio: Kraabel’s solo saxophone improvisations while walking in London and elsewhere with her infant child/ren in their pushchair were broadcast weekly 2002-2006 on Resonance 104.4 FM as Taking a Life for a Walk and more recently (without babies) as Going Outside.