ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will demonstrate and discuss an important feature of Improbasen, which is its arrangements of performance and interplay opportunities for the students. This activity is partly organised for only Improbasen’s regular students in its own concert series at jazz clubs in Oslo, and partly in initiating international collaborative projects where children and adolescents within jazz and improvisation from across the world meet and play together. The teacher then puts them together in different constellations to form functional bands across age, skills, and experience, where he himself always plays along on electric piano. The fact that pupils are able to play together directly with new children is made possible by the shared repertoire of tunes, and they have all learned the implicit codes for interplay in a jazz ensemble. This chapter also investigates how pupils use each other as learning resources. Often these attempts are unconscious and framed in the context of play or hanging around. Social activities that give space for peer-directed, informal learning are important for identification in jazz: to meet and learn from other children with the same interest. This is perhaps particularly important for females, who otherwise risk experiencing normative gender roles and alienation in the male-dominated culture that jazz is. ?
