"Those roses under my window make no difference to former roses or to better ones..."

                                                          —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

In an attentive classroom, the conductor's gesture for "PLAY" brings from each student a wild or subtle motion, a noise, an explosion of words, a song. Each student lets his/her voice or body act without first listening to what her neighbor does, without first entering into self-consciousness. They must each stick with it, their impulse, letting it blend cacophonously with those of their peers, offering up their innermost material for composition.

The members of this student orchestra are being taught Soundpainting, an improvisation-based approach to learning music developed by composer/conductor Walter Thompson. Armed with a shared vocabulary of over 700 gestures, each player reads the conductor's hands for the style of the next sound, movement or utterance, its duration, its tempo or key. The gestures, which form the basis of Thompson's technique, can be taught in combinations as simple and satisfying as "Improvise and Play," or in ever more detailed directives such as "minimalism" or "long tone." The more subtle the vocabulary, the more varied and structured the improvisatory works become. What began as Thompson's novel communication tool between conductor and orchestra has turned into a rigorous language through which music, dance, and theater can be taught and realized spontaneously. Pedagogically, the interaction between improvisation and composition, which Soundpainting so organically demonstrates, creates a real classroom community, in accord with John Dewey's insight that the "educational process has two sides—one psychological and one sociological—and that neither can be subordinated to the other, nor neglected. . . ." Students mastering even the most complicated Soundpainting gestures learn to be flexible as well as detailed, responsible to the direction of the whole piece while also making quick, creative choices. Thompson teaches how to make music without traditional instruments while covering basic musical concepts such as rhythm, melody and harmony. Even at its most outrageous, there is in the mayhem a common language and an abiding trust. The openness and confidence students take from this curriculum will be reflected in their other school-based learning, from reading comprehension and written expression, to problem solving.

Thompson's Soundpainting pedagogy uses the classroom as instrument to enable each group to express its own character, becoming improvisers and composers on the spot. This promotes a unique sense of community in the school or any setting; a poetical practice in which we can all "make a piece of music in which we would be willing to live."