Plenty of musical variety is easily built in when you accompany a group that enjoys the “potpourri” approach, a la Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. This is a wonderful opportunity to be thematic, and cleverly introduce stability to the crazy array of styles.

In Musical Improv Comedy I once wrote:

“Theme, Thematic, Thematicism. These terms refer to anything that becomes memorable as a result of repetition. It doesn’t have to be brilliant, it just has to happen more than once. Or even more effectively: again and again and again and again.”

That’s it.  My thematic strategy consists of playing several, simple musical ideas a bunch of times throughout a

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