Improvisation

When pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, bassist François Moutin, and drummer Ari Hoenig play music together, whether in concert or in the studio recording an album, the plan is always the same: There is no plan. No sheet music. Nothing discussed in advanced. Only improvisation. "We go on stage and we don't know what we're going to do," says Moutin. "No set list, no preconceived idea. It's whatever happens there. " What happens — one can say this much — is a roiling, vibrant set by a jazz trio that sounds like no other.

When pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, bassist François Moutin, and drummer Ari Hoenig play music together, whether in concert or in the studio recording an album, the plan is always the same: There is no plan. No sheet music. Nothing discussed in advanced. Only improvisation. "We go on stage and we don't know what we're going to do," says Moutin. "No set list, no preconceived idea. It's whatever happens there. " What happens — one can say this much — is a roiling, vibrant set by a jazz trio that sounds like no other.

The spontaneous creation of music -- jazz, real jazz -- can be magical. Often what we hear in the jazz clubs is a tightly scheduled series of solos -- first the sax, then the piano, then the bass, then the drums -- bookended by the heads of standards that the band plays in order as prescribed by a set list. Yeah, there's jazz in there, sure, but you can hardly call that spontaneity. Thursday night at the Regattabar was one of those transcendent evenings that can make one realize how ordinary, how formulaic, so much of the rest of today's music has become.

Surgery today might be cloaked in the scrubs of cool, informed professionalism, but in the May issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, writer, surgeon, and Harvard Medical School professor Atul Gawande delivers a fascinating history of the profession that shows a very different side. For much of their history, Gawande shows, surgeons were speedy improvisers who worked at a break-neck pace. Before the invention of anesthesia, many operations were performed in a minute or less, giving surgeons only moments to learn about the real workings of the body.

MAHLER IN CHINATOWN Curated by Anthony Coleman and Tanya Kalmanovitch New England Conservatory At: Jordan Hall, Nov. 29, 7 p.m. Free. necmusic.edu/ mahler-chinatown JUMPIN" INTO THE FUTURE Boston Conservatory new music festival Curated by Eric Hewitt At: Boston Conservatory Theater. Dec. 1-4. Free. www.bostonconservatory.edu/ performances A pair of upcoming concerts is set to blur the boundaries between two seemingly distinct genres - Western classical music on the one hand and jazz and improvised music on the other.

You can't explain improvisation. Paul Theroux

ARLINGTON — Tap dancer/choreographer Michelle Dorrance can improvise and kick it old school with the best of them. But as she and her spirited New York-based company showed Friday night at Arlington's Regent Theatre, the Bessie Award-winner has made her most groundbreaking contribution to the evolution of tap through tight, polished choreographic numbers that put the genre to the service of theatrical context. Drawing inspiration from music ranging from the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Fiona Apple to The Bluegrass Reunion and Big Maybelle, she crafts dances with personality, precision and charming...

Jazz Jason Stein's Locksmith Isidore Three Less Than Between Clean Feed Jason Stein In Exchange For a Process Leo Jason Stein specializes in an instrument that even most reed players don’t touch: the bass clarinet. And despite the fact that he’s not well known outside Chicago (or even in it), he’s releasing two very different albums on two different labels tomorrow. Neither approaches the outer edges of mainstream. One is a trio outing - his group Locksmith Isidore,...

'YO YO PARK," the sign across from Symphony Hall instructed arriving cars. "$20. " This may not have been the official billing of "The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma," but it accurately described the draw for the crowd. The superstar cellist is first among equals in the group, which, on Sunday and Monday, offered Boston two programs of music inspired by the ancient trading route connecting Europe, Central Asia, and China. Ma was just one of the band, leading only via occasional emcee duties or to prompt other players into the spotlight (for example, goading Wu Tong into a virtuoso solo on the sheng, a...

NEW YORK -- Ornette Coleman has always kept ahead of the curve, even as a teenager back in Fort Worth when he'd play hot jazz licks on the saxophone and get a scolding from his church band leader. Today, at 76, the jazz visionary is not slowing down to let others catch up, launching his own record label with his first disc of new music in nearly a decade -- the Grammy-nominated CD "Sound Grammar . " As a largely self-taught musician who dared to be different in the late 1940s and '50s, Coleman suffered worse indignities than even the most hapless "American...

Berlin police said Tuesday officers found three improvised pipe bombs on the sidelines of a huge leftist protest march in an incident that a prominent lawmaker called an act of terrorism. The devices of about 40-centimeter (16-inches) each were filled with an explosive but were not detonated, police spokesman Stefan Redlich said Tuesday. An explosion of the aluminum pipes could have caused serious or deadly injuries within a perimeter of 10 to 15 meters (49 feet), he added. Experts are still investigating the explosive substance and do not yet know whether it would have burst the pipes...

ARLINGTON — Tap dancer/choreographer Michelle Dorrance can improvise and kick it old school with the best of them. But as she and her spirited New York-based company showed Friday night at Arlington's Regent Theatre, the Bessie Award-winner has made her most groundbreaking contribution to the evolution of tap through tight, polished choreographic numbers that put the genre to the service of theatrical context. Drawing inspiration from music ranging from the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Fiona Apple to The Bluegrass Reunion and Big Maybelle, she crafts dances with personality, precision and charming...

The Grammys don't know jazz. Nowhere is this more evident, year after year, than in the award for best improvised jazz solo. Because most Grammy voters probably don't spend much time thinking about what constitutes an exceptional solo, the same figures get honored year after year. The choices are safe, and they're the biggest names in jazz. Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, and Oscar Peterson have each won that award three times. Michael Brecker won it an astounding six times.

You can't explain improvisation. Paul Theroux

Beware of improvising 6-year-old actors. That's a warning from comic Louis C.K., who said Sunday that acting with Ursula Parker is one of the hardest parts of his job. Parker plays one of his two daughters on the FX show "Louie. " C.K. says Parker likes to improvise and even though he tells her not to, she does it because she knows it bugs him. The comic joked: "I'm burning film trying to raise this kid. "

MAHLER IN CHINATOWN Curated by Anthony Coleman and Tanya Kalmanovitch New England Conservatory At: Jordan Hall, Nov. 29, 7 p.m. Free. necmusic.edu/ mahler-chinatown JUMPIN" INTO THE FUTURE Boston Conservatory new music festival Curated by Eric Hewitt At: Boston Conservatory Theater. Dec. 1-4. Free. www.bostonconservatory.edu/ performances A pair of upcoming concerts is set to blur the boundaries between two seemingly distinct genres - Western classical music on the one hand and jazz and improvised music on the other.

Unlikely locations have often served as the homes of emerging artists, and in the next few days you can see a startlingly talented young Boston singer shine in the musical "Mama I Want to Sing. " The Our Place Theatre Project has transformed an unassuming, multipurpose space adjacent to the Egleston Square YMCA building into a new performance home. And with "Mama I Want to Sing" as the anchor show in this year's annual African American Theatre Festival, it's quite clear that the new digs are working out well.

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon were beginning to tire of Michael Winterbottom’s postmodern schemes. In Winterbottom’s “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story’’ (2005), the two British comedians starred as slightly exaggerated versions of themselves, playing actors making a foolhardy movie adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s famous novel. Some of the best parts were improvised scenes between Coogan and Brydon, including one of dueling Al Pacino impressions. Now, Winterbottom wanted to stretch the improv on a road trip.