Improvisation is part of everyday life in the musical environment and is an integral part of music studies at the ZHdK. It opens up the senses, comprehensively trains the ear, increases communication skills, performance competence and flexibility and refines perception. It offers an integrated university of the arts the opportunity to celebrate cross-disciplinary and cross-profile networking with relish. 
→ The modules offered in the course catalogue are correspondingly numerous and diverse.
→ The ZHdK's own art apparatus Mehrspur offers Spurfrei, an event format for free improvisation that is open to all.

Zett article Playing music without a safety net

Interpretation & Performance
Group improvisation has a uniquely long tradition at the ZHdK Music and its predecessor institutions throughout Europe: it has been taught as a compulsory subject in classical music for over fourty years. Specialised instrumentalists benefit enormously from improvisation: playful access to their own instrument and fear-free music-making; expanded listening and aesthetic openness; access to contemporary music; promotion of individual language and sharpening of the artistic profile; greater stage presence and a heightened sense of responsibility for musical events. These experiences also benefit the interpretation of notated music, and extended listening refines the quality of ensemble playing.
→ All instrumental students in their first Bachelor year: The Art of the Unexpected
→ Elective module from 2nd Bachelor year and in the Master programmes: Advanced Impro Pool 
→ Elective module following the Advanced Impro Pool: Improvisationsensemble Specialised
→ Elective module for melodic instruments and singing: Historical Improvisation
→ Variant subject for Master's Music Performance students: Improvisation
→ All improvisation modules: Course catalogue

Jazz and Pop
Jazz
Improvisation is the defining element in all jazz movements, and the improvisational attitude is the actual core competence of jazz musicians. This goes beyond improvised melodies, rhythms, forms etc.. It also encompasses the interaction of people in a room and the interpretation of composed music. The focus is on the emergence, personal development and unfolding of the individual in the music: a unique musical moment arises from the complex interplay of improvising people before and during the actual music-making. The Jazz and Pop profile also teaches, learns and researches with this attitude.
→ Bachelor students Jazz: Improvisation and repertoire Jazz
→ Bachelor students Jazz: Play What You Hear / Free Improvisation
→ Bachelor students Jazz: Sections: Rhythm / Horn / Vocal Jazz
→ Bachelor students Jazz: Harmony Jazz

Pop
Improvisation also plays an important role in the context of various pop styles: spontaneous or planned solo passages during a performance, composing and producing new songs, jam sessions. Despite pop's claim to “design”, individual instrumental parts and vocal passages are often not fully composed – musical content, groove and sound aesthetics are always created spontaneously during rehearsals or recording sessions. Pop musicians must therefore be able to develop and realize various alternative accompaniments and solos at short notice. This is the goal, content and method of performative and music education work in schools. The resulting “parts” become a fixed part of an arrangement from this moment on and in some cases even establish a copyright. Ultimately, they are expected by the audience and the musicians and are reproduced in concerts.
→ Bachelor students Pop: Pop Styles Workshop
→ Bachelor students Pop: Pop History Workshop
→ Bachelor students Pop: Sections: Rhythm/Vocal Pop
→ Bachelor students Pop: Harmony Pop

Jazz and Pop
→ All students: Workshops of Choice 
→ Elective module following the Advanced Impro Pool: Improvisationsensemble Specialised
→ Vocal students: Pure Voice Experience
→ All Improvisation modules: Course catalogue

Church Music
Improvisation has a centuries-old tradition, particularly in organ playing. And so organ students in the Bachelor's and Master's programmes each enjoy four semesters of individual tuition in improvisation, which is also part of the further education courses in the DAS Church Music Organ. The aim is the creative and situation-appropriate use of various forms of free and chorale-based organ improvisation in the context of church services – a skill that is increasingly in demand in the church profession today. Improvisation lessons are taught by the two main subject lecturers, although they are deliberately not taught by the same teacher as the main subject.
Forms of choral (group) improvisation are also taught in the choral conducting major and occasionally incorporated into the vespers performances of the ZHdK choir.
Derived from the needs of the corresponding church practice – church services with popular music, gospel concerts, singing exercises, etc. – learning improvised, idiomatic accompaniment models from sacred pop, jazz and Latin is part of the individual piano lessons for all church music students.
→ Compulsory module in the Bachelor Organ: Organ Improvisation / Liturgical Organ Playing
→ Compulsory module in the Master Performance Organ: Organ Improvisation / Liturgical Organ Playing
→ Compulsory module in the Master Performance Organ: Practical Piano Playing (Classical, Jazz, Pop)
→ Compulsory module in the Masters Specialised Performance Organ: Organ Improvisation
→ All improvisation modules: Course catalogue

Composition / Theory / Sound Design / Sound Engineer
Using voice, instruments, alternative instruments and electronics, improvisation raises awareness of communicative strategies and energy flows. It also promotes the ability to spontaneously shape musical progressions and to use energy and materials of all kinds constructively.
Improvisation is offered in these modules, among others:
→ Improvisation and performance concepts
→ Electroacoustic Improvisation 
→ Interaction of instrument and live electronics
→ All improvisation modules: Course catalogue

Music Education
Improvisational skills are particularly valuable for teachers, which is why pedagogy students are increasingly to be found in improvisation modules. The profile also offers teaching improvisation in the classroom.
Improvisation plays a special and central role in the Music and Movement and School Music courses in particular. The experimental use of voice, movement, a wide range of instruments and various materials leads, via a structuring process, to creations that are imbued with improvisational elements. The contextualisation of methodical approaches with a clear aesthetic concept is of particular importance. In addition, dealing with contingency requires professionalised improvisational skills in lesson planning. The understanding of improvisation affects all areas of artistic-pedagogical work and forms one of the foundations for the staging of music and movement-related teaching and learning processes.
→ Module offer from Music and Movement / School Music: Improvisation Music
→ Module in the Master Music Pedagogy: Teaching Improvisation in the Classroom
→ Module in the Bachelor School Music: Practical Transfer of Collective Music Making
→ All improvisation modules: Course catalogue

PreCollege Music
Open to all profiles, the ZHdK PreCollege Music offers the module Improvisation in small groups. On the one hand, the focus is on the development of a “musical-creative expression process”: presenting a statement on one's own instrument in the moment, developing it further in playing/singing, sharpening and shaping it. On the other hand, listening, playing and reacting to the other players in the ensemble at the same time promotes musical communication skills, rhetoric and the joy of discussion. Free improvisational approaches and jazz/pop improvisation are on offer. 
→ Module Improvisation

Continuing Education
→ CAS Creation & Scenario in Music
→ Module “Play Your Own Thing! – Freie Improvisation als Künstlerische Praxis”
→ Module “Voice-Lab”

The Improvisation working group, with over twenty music lecturers, offers space for content-related, pedagogical, artistic and university-political exchange. On stage, the members cultivate musical dialogue in a wide variety of formations. 

→ METRIC – Modernizing European Higher Music Education through Improvisation
→ unerhört! – a Zurich Jazz Festival
→ Sonic Matter – Platform for experimental music