Fresh Music: ....

Fresh Music: Explorations with the Creative Workshop Ensemble for Musicians, Artists, and Teachers by Jon Damian chronicles 40 years of Jon’s Creative Workshop Ensemble(CreW) at the Berklee College of Music and internationally. The book provides refreshing alternatives and immerses and engages the reader in real and practical creative experiences. Fresh Music is written in the form of a play with characters consisting of the workshop members, including Jon, and regular dialog with the readers; virtual workshop members. The book invites the reader to join in with CreW activities, into the bubbling stew of CreW ideas inspired by everything in the universe, from alphabets to zodiacs!

“This is a brilliant book. Bursting with ideas about improvising and its teaching—in jazz, any music, dance, painting—life! You name it! Full of specifics, and full of a lively, collaborative, adventurous, humane approach to the making of almost anything.” - Eleanor Duckworth Professor of education, emerita, Harvard University; modern dancer; author of The Having of Wonderful Ideas: And Other Essays on Teaching and Learning

“I received the most valuable elements from Jon’s Creative Workshop, opening a door of endless creativity in me as a film composer and concert artist.” - Stephane Wrembel Composer of “Bistro Fada,” the theme for Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris

“I played in one of Jon Damian’s early Creative Workshop Ensembles. He showed me new ways of looking at what I already knew . . . turning them around and seeing them from a different angle. New possibilities. He opened the window and the door. He gave me the keys . . .  a rope to hang onto allowing larger leaps. To not be afraid of jumping off . . . to make mistakes . . . to learn. Jon has spent his life dedicated to finding truth, beauty, and expanding the imagination. His new book Fresh Music welcomes us all into this amazing world.” - Bill Frisell Grammy-winning guitarist

“In Fresh Music, master teacher Jon Damian shares a whole curriculum of creative ensemble activities that will open students up to new ways of hearing, playing, and interacting. Jon leads us in a fresh exploration of the basic building blocks of music: dynamics, rhythm, timbre, and pitch direction. Drawing inspiration from nature, daily life, games, classic scenes and stories, and the other arts, he shows creative ways to build musical forms and focused contexts for composition and improvisation.” - Allan Chase Chair, Ear Training Department, Berklee College of Music

“Albert Einstein said ‘It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.’ Jon Damian’s Fresh Music is a strong tonic for the situation Einstein bemoaned and which is still the case today. Fresh Music moves the student through engaging experiential lessons that break wide open the creative process. We need more Jon Damians and more Fresh Music!” - Roger Dell Director of education, Farnsworth Art Museum, and former lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Extension School

www.jondamian.com