Niels Lan Doky

The accomplished jazz pianist Niels Lan Doky challenges us to reconsider structure and become more comfortable with uncertainty by taking advantage of improvisation in our daily lives.

Niels Lan Doky believes we are born improvisers. Life is one big ad-lib. You make up your life as you go along. You try to structure it, but at the end of the day your life is improvised.

Actually, 98% of jazz music is improvised on the spot! And, in order, for that sparking and jamming to occur anytime, anywhere, musicians apply proven improvisation techniques, developed by the great jazz masters over the years.

Niels Lan Doky aims to utilise these improvisation tools and adapt them to contexts outside of music: in company management or family relationships, for instance. By bringing 'jazz' improvisation into everyday life, new opportunities are suddenly revealed – ones that would probably have remained hidden if everything had been planned out in advance.

- Life is one big ad-lib. You make up your life as you go along. You try to structure it, but at the end of the day your life is improvised.

Join TEDxCopenhagen’s 2016 Main Event on April 7th and listen to Niels Lan Doky’s speech about how improvisation can be applied outside the world of jazz music.

- By Monika Gailiute

About the speaker

Niels Lan Doky is a jazz pianist, composer, producer, movie director, lecturer and writer. He has written the book Improvisation – I musikken, på arbejdet og i livet (Improvisation – In music, work and life) and is also co-founder & music director of the jazz club, The Standard.