I recently read this article on Christian Howes’ blog and right away I understood that this violin/improvisation teacher is passionate about teaching improvisation to children. This is right up my alley! I could not possibly write a better intro to this site and the Bach case study than what Chris wrote himself on his site.
Before I got heavily into jazz, I improvised using the only vocabulary I knew. Jazz has a history of drawing from classical composers, but I predict an explosion of new music once improvisation is taught to classical musicians from an early age.
This so exactly states my view!!! That is why I have spent time and energy organizing my experiments in teaching the first baby steps in improvisation to my young Suzuki students, into a booklet, Elements of Music Theory/Improvisation. Here is Chris’ video below. Enjoy and be sure to check out his site as it is full of great resources!