Reinhard Gagel

Improvisation is my central artistic, pedagogical and scientific concern. Trained in school music and instrumental pedagogy, piano. Postgraduate studies in music therapy according to Nordoff/Robbins. Collaboration with internationally renowned improvisation musicians. Artistic projects between composition and improvisation (zapping projects) with his own ensembles. Director of the “Improvisiakum” – an international workshop for improvising musicians in Cologne. Head of Music Theory, Improvisation, Composition and Creative Media at the Rheinische Musikschule der Stadt Köln. Extensive workshop activities and music theatre projects.

From 2010 to 2012, I worked on the research project “Quo vadis Teufelsgeiger?” on the subject of classical musicians and improvisation at the Vienna University of Music. I have been teaching group improvisation, musical communication and didactics of improvisation at the Institute for Music Pedagogy there since 2003 and completed my doctorate in 2008 with a dissertation on “Improvisation as a social art”. I am chairman of the ring für gruppenimprovisation e.V. and from 2012 to 2020 I worked as an artist, educator and researcher at exploratorium berlin, where I set up the theory and research department and headed it until February 2020.

“My vision is an artistic practice that bundles the creative abilities of all participants in a coherent musical work process. Improvisation is a social art in which people invent and perform their own music out of shared communication. My aim is to explore these processes and to win over as many people as possible to this form of music-making.

Further information can be found at:
www.reinhard-gagel.de
www.impro-ring.de