Sunday, December 3, 2 - 4 pm

Join us for an illuminating journey into the realms of improvisation and dreaming, where music becomes a gateway to understanding the depths of the nonconscious mind. In this unique workshop, we delve into the shared neurobiology of improvisation and dreaming, uncovering their connections and enriching your musical practice with insights from the science of dreams.

Workshop Highlights

Therapeutic Potential Revealed: Discover cutting-edge research exploring how dreaming contributes to psychological well-being and what these findings reveal about improvisation.
Your Narrative Mind: Explore how narrative cognition shapes dreams and intriguing parallels with improvisation and musical experience more broadly.

Creativity Unleashed: Find out about how dreams develop through loosely adjacent themes and see how this mirrors the flights of creative imagination in improvisation.
Theory Meets Experience: Engage in guided “experiments” that bridge neuroscience research with your own musical practice. Whether you play an instrument or sing, you’ll have an opportunity to traverse the uncharted territories of the nonconscious mind.

Who Should Attend: Curious minds, musicians, artists, and listeners intrigued by the interplay between improvisation and dreaming. No matter your background, this workshop invites you to uncover the mysteries of the nonconscious that underlie musical creativity.

About Dr. Bradley Vines, PhD, MBA

Dr. Vines is a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in music emotion, perception, and performance, and a saxophonist. He holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from McGill University, an M.B.A. from the University of Oxford, and a B.A. in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley. He has postdoctoral research training in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis, and has been a Research Associate and Lab Director at the Institute of Mental Health in the University of British Columbia Department of Psychiatry. Bradley has received competitive grants for his research from the GRAMMY Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NINDS), and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. He has 26 academic publications to his name, which have been cited in the literature more than 2,700 times and referenced in major media outlets including the New York Times, US News and World Report, and Businessweek. His published work includes research on music for stroke recovery, the epigenetics of music learning, multisensory integration in the perception of music, neuroplasticity in fine motor coordination, and pitch memory. He led research on music for psychedelic therapy as Chief Science Officer at Wavepaths and conducted research on music in advertising and sonic branding as Director of Neuroscience at Nielsen. He currently teaches Music Cognition for Berklee College of Music Online and hosts The Neuroscience of Improvisation, which is a program exploring the experience of improvisation from the perspective of neurobiology.

As a saxophonist, Bradley studied jazz improvisation in the William Paterson University Jazz program and privately with Gary Smulyan, Paul Nedzela, Knoel Scott, and Allaudin Mathieu. He has also studied South Indian Carnatic music with several prominent musicians in that tradition, including Dr. Vijaya Bharati, Ghatam Suresh Vaidyanathan, and Prasant Radhakrishnan. Bradley has contributed to music for psychedelic therapy as a Wavepaths artist and has performed with musicians such as Eddie Gayle, CK Ladzekpo, Mel Martin, and Steve Turre, in a variety of venues including Yoshi’s Oakland and Zellerbach Hall.