Day One: Workshop Paul Driessen and Jim ten Boske
Traditionally the festival opens with a subject which is extremely important in musicianship and the rest of life: Improvisation.
Crime Scene was the "Theaterzaal" (Theatre Hall), a very depressing spot with black walls and floors (it's a stage after all) and "attractive" illumination with blinding spotlights. Last year we had a better place, but this hall had been sacrificed to the modern media: it's a recording studio now!
The flood of participants was not as large as I was used to, last years almost everyone showed up, now there were just five. I guess that was caused by the early start of the Masterclasses. Never mind, now we had more time for improvisation.
The aim of the session was to "grow" musical ideas. Jim ten Boske and Paul Driessen set up a rhythmic and harmonic base pattern, and the others improvised on it by rotation.
At a certain stage I found out that the ideas were distracting me from the rhythm. Lesson from this: Improvisation means staying sharp despite the flood of ideas.