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Research Collaborator

Washington University in St. Louis

Professor Sawyer is one of the world's leading experts on improvisational creativity. His interdisciplinary research program spans education, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. Group Genius (2007) is his tenth book; others include Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation (2006) and Improvised Dialogues: Emergence and Creativity in Conversation (2003). He has also published more than fifty scientific articles. Dr. Sawyer has been a jazz pianist for more than thirty years and spent several years playing piano with Chicago improv theatre groups. He holds a PhD in psychology and an MA in human development (University of Chicago) and a BS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

So one of the things that improvisation has come to mean in the context of highly technological performance is that improvisation is the last claim to the legitimate presence of a human in the performance of music.

– Bob Ostertag