I felt a challenge to compose music. That's where my challenge was, for the most part.

[Improvisation ] is been with me all my life. We all do it.

There are these sounds that come from outside that work really well if you're listening. If you're not listening, if you're blocking them out, then you don't get it. You don't get the merger of what the players are doing with everything, listening to everything.

Working in theoretical systems can take away the juice. It can also be very beautiful, but when you're trying to satisfy a theoretical principle rather than a sonic reality, then it can become dry.

Everybody improvises their way through every day. And so I do that with music.

In my Deep Listening class at RPI, I always do an hour of energy exercises to start with. Then we do a listening meditation after that, after the body has been loosened up and warmed up and is ready. We do the listening. After that, there's the journaling of the experience, which they do each time throughout the semester to the point that I have them write a final paper on what they've experienced.

The students were missing out a lot in their ensemble playing because they weren't listening to each other or the environment.