In music - as in life - the ability to improvise is important.

“The first rule of improvising is, there are no wrong notes,” offered cellist and Bexley High graduate Mike Ingalls, one of several participants in Arts Month in the Bexley Schools. “The most dissonant note can be resolved into something beautiful.”

A partnership between the Bexley Education Foundation and the Bexley school district, the effort to highlight the arts began in October with the opening of the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Theatre at Bexley High School.

Events continued through November, with community members and Bexley alumni demonstrating their talents and talking to students about a life in the arts.

The slate of volunteers has included Dan Hart, executive director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, photographer James Westwater, and Mark and Wendy Morton, a husband-wife team who serve as principal bass and cellist for the Columbus Symphony.

Ingalls, a 1971 graduate of Bexley High School, took high school and middle school orchestra students through a confidence-building lesson in improvising on their instruments.

Preparation is the key to being able to wing it, Ingalls told students during his Nov. 17 appearance.  “It’s a science, it’s not all art.”

His own career has been an exercise in versatility, while following the resonant lure of the music.

Ingalls attended Bexley High for one year, after moving from Indiana.  It was the year before the orchestra program was resurrected, so Ingalls sought instruction at Capital University and as first chair with the Columbus Youth Symphony.

He chose the cello because “it comes closest to the human voice. In college, he started out studying physics, but quickly lost interest.

“Physics wasn’t fun anymore,” he recalled. “If you can’t enjoy what you’re doing, why bother?”

Instead, he earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Baldwin-Wallace College.

After putting the cello away for several years, he found a “spark plug” for getting back into music with the folk scene around clubs in Cleveland Heights.

Here he was introduced to improvisation. His first experiences were nerve-wracking, but he soon learned how to go with the flow.

“I had never taken improvisation lessons,” he confided. ‘I’ve done this by brute force. Now I can sit down with anyone and do it.”

He set the cello down for another five years while working in marketing research, but the music wouldn’t die.

While playing weddings, he was invited to teach in Zanesville.

Ingalls, who lives in Logan, Ohio, is now an adjunct professor of cello at Muskingum College. He also writes solos for seventh and eight grade students to use in contests.

The cellist also composes, and had a piece premiered by the Welsh Hills Symphony in Granville.

He plays about 50 weddings a year, and markets a line of t-shirts for working musicians that read “I gig, therefore I am.”

He has been sitting in with other musicians from the Columbus Blues Alliance at the Thirsty Ear, and travels to the Blue Gator in Athens with a duo called the Paranormals.

Because of his cello, they dubbed him “‘Yo Mama.”  When they found out he was from Indiana, he became “Hoosier-Mama.”

Ingalls is interested in doing more of the workshops such as the one conducted for the Bexley students, designed to teach the young musicians how to be comfortable improvising.

He said he would love to have a string orchestra that improvises.

But to be able to play extemporaneously, a musician has to know the instrument thoroughly, he insisted.

His advice for aspiring musicians?

“Practice, baby, practice,” Ingalls urged. “Nothing takes the place of practice.”

Ongoing events of Arts Month in Bexley Schools include a display of student artwork in the new arts wing of the high school. The exhibition is open to the public during regular school hours.

Author in Residence Wendy McVicker has been working with fifth graders at Cassingham and Maryland schools, who will display and read their stories at a reception Dec. 4 from 7-8:30 p.m. at Maryland School.