[Harp-L] Improvising, starter tunes

[Pierre <plavio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been taking piano lessons for 6 months now and my teacher is interested 
in learning to improvise. She is in her 70's I guess and has played piano 
and organ all her life. 12 years of classical piano lessons and 13 years of 
"pop" organ and a bachelor of music. Anyways give her any sheet music and 
she can look at it for one minute and then just play it slowly note for note 
and mostly in time. Anyways she is interested in learning to improvise and 
although I have some ideas how to ween her off sheets, I am wondering if 
anyone has any concrete example of where she could start. Basically I just 
want to give her a few starter assignments, time will do the rest if she 
remains interested.

I'm thinking of jazz standards to begin with as she grew up with jazz and 
knows most of these tunes. I don't expect her to sound jazzy at first, but 
for her to just sound musical and to have fun.

Anyways I guess what I am looking for is a few starter tunes. My intention 
is for her to play the tune with both hands until she is comfortable with it 
and for her to just let go of the melody and just fool around with the tonic 
of each chord and work up to playing scales and arpeggios associated with 
the left hand chord.

So any ideas for good starter tunes?