“Improvisation – truly being in the moment – means exploring what you don’t know. It means going into that dark room where you don’t recognize things. It means operating on the recall part of your brain, a sort of muscle memory, and allowing your gut to take precedence over your brain. This is something I still work on every day: learning to get out of my own way. It’s not easy, but the times when you can do that are truly magical. Improvising is like opening a wonderful box where everything you take out is always new. You’ll never get bored, because what that box contains is different every single time.”
Herbie Hancock
