New Music Improv. Ensemble: Doodling (Tom Johnson)- Chris Cheung

As a pianist, the idea of reading paragraphs of texts as my score to play a piece sounds completely fresh to me. As I remember from our last lesson, we are instructed to play this piece only in our own time, in a private space. I attempted to play the piece after I finished my regular practice in the practice rooms.

It felt almost like I was conducting an experiment on the piano rather than I was playing a piece. Everything was spontaneous and the result sounded really avant-garde. I think one thing that was challenging was the fact that I have to keep neglecting what I was playing at the moment, but at the same time I was trying to make it sound good. I thought this contradiction was intriguing to note, and I think part of the purposes of this piece must be letting the player learning how to let go of his/her thoughts on the music. Although I sometimes question (or doubt) about how musical this piece would sound, it is definitely interesting for the sake of self-entertainment.