Creative Musical Dialogues Between Human and Machine
Fredrik Ullén, David Dolan, and Ralph Abelein Piano
Oded Ben-Tal Electronics
September 17, 2025, 7–9 p.m.
at the Max Planck Institute for Emprical Aesthetics, ArtLab
Grüneburgweg 14, 60322 Frankfurt am Main
Admission is free, please register here.
The event is already fully booked. However, you can watch it live via our YouTube channel.
You probably heard about how AI is going to take over the world. Come and listen to an alternative perspective: AI as a musical partner. Since 2022, Oded Ben-Tal has been developing JHAIMI (Joint Human AI Musical Improvisation), an AI-inspired system capable of improvising with human performers.
At the concert, you will hear three renowned pianists—Ralph Abelein, David Dolan, and Fredrik Ullén—improvising live with each other (duo) and with this system (duo and trio). These improvisations will be intertwined with explanations of how the AI system works and how the pianists and the computer create music together.
This public concert is part of an art/science project that is aimed at studyingimprovisation and joint action between humans and machines. You will have an opportunity to participate in a discussion with scientific experts and professional musicians on the theme of human–computer co-creativity.
About the Event
Oded Ben-Tal has been conducting creative research on the ability of generative AI to become a performing partner to a human musicians in real-time improvisation. Improvisation melds together most aspects of music—listening, performing, creating, evaluating—live and in real-time. Getting an AI system to participate in this type of music-making is very challenging. However, doing so, and doing it well, raises intriguing questions about the nature of creativity and the ability of computers to be a source of inspiration for us.
At the core of Ben-Tal's approach is designing a system that can listen musically to the pianists and respond musically in real-time during the performance. Unlike the most well-known examples of generative AI, the system Ben-Tal is developing—Joint Human AI Music Improvisation (JHAIME)—is not based on imitation. JHAIME is designed to contribute something unique, shaped by Ben-Tal's compositional sensibilities, which are encoded into the system, and engage in an ongoing dialogue with the pianists. The result is a new form of musical dialogue, created by the possibilities of new technology that draws on 300 years of musical tradition.
This project emerged from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded research network, Datasounds, Datasets and Datasense: Unboxing the Hidden Layers Between Musical Data, Knowledge and Creativity. Currently, the Volkswagen Foundation is supporting this research with a grant titled Creative Musical Dialogues Between Human and Machine: A Novel Approach to Studying Improvisation and Joint Action, in collaboration Örjan de Manzano of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA).
Samples
About the Artists
Oded Ben-Tal is a composer and researcher working at the intersection of music, computing, and cognition. His work addresses the evolving landscape of music composition and performance in the digital age, exploring how technology shapes artistic expression. Since 2016, he has been exploring the application of AI in music: using AI to generate compositional material and developing AI-inspired systems for live, interactive performances. His work has been funded by grants from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Volkswagen Foundation in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics.
In addition to his compositional achievements, Ben-Tal, an associate professor at Kingston University, London, UK, is an influential educator. He has taught at various institutions, focusing on fostering creativity and critical thinking in music. His pedagogical approach emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and encourages students to engage with both the theoretical and practical aspects of music.
Fredrik Ullén is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Karolinska Institutet, and an internationally acclaimed pianist. His research focuses on the neuropsychology of expertise and creativity—specifically, the brain mechanisms that allow us to perform at a high level in a given field after many years of focused training. His specific interests include how the brain represents and controls musical skills, the importance of intrinsic motivation for learning and creativity, and the interplay between genes and environment during the acquisition of expertise. He also studies musical improvisation as a tool for understanding creative problem-solving and its brain mechanisms. His discography as a pianist currently includes 25 titles, which have received numerous awards and accolades from the international press. These include a recording of the complete piano works of György Ligeti, as well as a recent complete recording of Sorabji's Transcendental Studies—one of the largest and most complex cycles written for solo piano.
David Dolan is an international concert pianist, researcher, and educator. He has devoted part of his career to reviving the art of classical improvisation and its performance applications. In his worldwide solo and chamber music performances, he returns to the tradition of incorporating extemporizations within repertoire in embellished repeats, eingangs, and cadenzas, as well as improvised preludes, interludes, and fantasies. He is a professor of classical improvisation at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, UK, where he also founded the Centre for Creative Performance and Classical Improvisation. He also teaches at the Yehudi Menuhin School and conducts masterclasses and workshops around the world. His research focuses on applying expressive narrative and creativity to repertoire and improvised performances (solo and ensemble), in close collaboration with the Imperial College London.
Ralph Abelein is a jazz pianist, arranger, and composer and has been teaching jazz piano, improvisation/free accompaniment, arranging, and ensembles at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts (HfMDK) as a professor of Schulpraktisches Instrumentalspiel since 2005. In 2008, he initiated the annual project "Music for Silent Movies" at the HfMDK, which won the Hessian University Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2021. Abelein represents the HfMDK on the board of the Hessian Film and Media Academy and is a member of the program advisory board of the Polytechnic Foundation of Frankfurt am Main for the project "Jazz and Improvised Music in Schools." Abelein played a leading role in conceiving and preparing the "MA Bigband," a cooperative master's program with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band introduced in 2022. He heads the program together with Hendrika Entzian and Ed Partyka. His textbook Keyboard Accompaniment and Improvisation, co-authored with Jyrki Tenni, has been published in four languages to date. Recently, Abelein has worked intensively on the possibilities of free improvisation in ensembles and regularly holds courses on the subject.
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