Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

(Paperback, Main - Canons)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

This book is about the inner sources of spontaneous creation. It is about where art in the widest sense comes from. It is about why we create and what we learn while doing so. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms.

Free Play is directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honour and strengthen their own creative powers. It reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed or obscured by certain unavoidable facts of life. How it can finally be liberated - how we can be liberated - to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice.


Wise, generous and timeless, it has been a touchstone for creativity since 1990 and it is a book that you will find yourself reaching for again and again in times of need. This 2024 edition includes a new afterword by the author and a foreword by Women's Prize for Fiction-winner Ruth Ozeki.

Reviews

'Nachmanovitch tells it like it is in the most important book on improvisation I've yet seen' - KEITH JARRETT

'Stephen Nachmanovitch has produced a celebration of human uniqueness' - NORMAN COUSINS

'Would that Free Play found its way into every school, office, hospital, and factory. It is a most exciting book and a most important one' - YEHUDI MENUHIN

'A classic. Nachmanovitch examines the prerequisites of creation, offers concrete strategies for active surrender [and] considers the ultimate impetus of why we are called to create at all . . . altogether vitalising. The remedy for creative block and existential stuckness' - MARIA POPOVA

'If you want to be intellectually informed about how people actually create things, then you should read it at least once' - ROBERT PIRSIG

Author Bio

Stephen Nachmanovitch performs and teaches internationally as an improvisational violinist, and at the intersections of performing and multimedia arts, philosophy and ecology. In the 1970s he was a pioneer in free improvisation on violin, viola and electric violin. He has presented masterclasses and workshops at many conservatoires and universities, and has had numerous appearances on radio, television and festivals. He is the author of two books on the creative process: Free Play and The Art of Is. He lives with his family in Virginia.freeplay.com