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Expectations, patterns, and novelty shape the learning and storage of long-term memories by the hippocampus. Similarly, when improvising, jazz musicians navigate between setting up expectations and defying them with creative spontaneity. When musicians play jazz standards, they generally begin with tried and true patterns with variations. Great music emerges when they defy these patterns. By shattering expectations through innovative reinterpretations, they create something profoundly new and distinct.

Join multi-instrumentalist jazz musician, composer, and educator T.K. Blue, pianist James Austin, and Zuckerman Institute PhD student and NSF Fellow Abhishek Shah for a jazz concert and dialogue exploring the fascinating parallels between neuroscience and jazz improvisation.

Music on the Brain is a collaboration between the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute with the support of Jazz Foundation of America.