Bringing together jazz music and science as we celebrate the way that music affects our brains and bodies.
Expectations, patterns, and novelty shape the learning and storage of long-term memories by the hippocampus. When improvising, jazz musicians navigate between setting up expectations and defying them with creative spontaneity. When musicians play jazz standards, they generally begin with tried and true patterns (with variations). Great music emerges when they defy these patterns. By shattering expectations through innovative reinterpretations, they create something profoundly new and distinct.
Come enjoy a jazz concert and dialogue with multi-instrumentalist jazz musician, composer, and educator T.K. Blue, pianist James Austin, Jr., and our guest speaker, ZI PhD student and NSF Fellow Abhi Shah, where we explore the fascinating parallels between neuroscience and jazz improvisation.
Music on the Brain is a collaboration between the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute, with the support of the Jazz Foundation of America.