Sculpting Air In The Sub Habitat
(2023)
author(s): Lotte Anker
published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
Sculpting Air in The Sub Habitat (subtitle: Texture and Form in Composition for Larger Ensemble of Improvisers) is an exploration and unfolding of creative processes in composing for a larger ensemble (6+ musicians) of improvisers as well as the processes in the ensemble rehearsals and concerts. In Sculpting Air, I am both composer and performer. I work with an ensemble created for this project: Sub Habitat.
Sub Habitat members are: Lotte Anker (DK), Mazen Kerbaj (GER/LBN), Katt Hernandez (S/USA), Nina de Heney (S), Sten Sandell (S), Andrea Neumann (GER), Burkhard Beins (GER)
Sculpting Air grew out of a need to deepen, (re)examine and challenge my compositional practice (including aesthetic preferences and inclinations) within a larger ensemble of improvisers, and I went into the project looking for something: more or less vague, fragmented notions of particular sonic and textural qualities and structural concepts. Notions of a higher degree of connectedness between predetermined and undetermined elements in composition etc.
The project is based on my own compositional work and 4 ensemble Sessions and Session concerts during 2020-22. It includes examples and reflections from these processes, and through them I try to articulate answers to the following research questions:
Based on the concepts of texture, MODE and LIBRARY, how can I develop new compositional tools for a larger ensemble of improvisers in a music that reflects the sonic palette and expression of the individual musician, the expression and identity of the ensemble as an entity, and my artistic intention?
Including:
How can these tools be deployed as sculpting materials in a large form piece, where the predetermined and indeterminate elements mutually reinforce each other and thus help to extend the musical space?
How can I explore the sonic potential of the ensemble in dialogue with the musicians?
How does the ensemble's overall expression inform my compositional work and vice versa?
In score form, how can I develop a specific vocabulary, concepts and notational forms that clarify my artistic intention and convey the balance between the predetermined and indeterminate elements of the composition?
quiet citadel
(2022)
author(s): Ryan Evans
published in: Research Catalogue
'quiet citadel' is a site-specific, participatory music project that examines music-making and the purposes that music can serve. I made 'quiet citadel' as part of the Hinge Arts Residency with Springboard for the Arts. They describe the fellowship as a community development program that activates arts programming related to the historic Fergus Falls State Hospital, or "the Kirkbride."
Presented in four sections, this exposition offers a case study of how I instrumentalized my music-making and music-sharing to assist the residents of Fergus Falls, a small town in rural Minnesota, in determining what to do with the disused Fergus Falls State Hospital, or "the Kirkbride." All told, this exposition provides an example of using music as a research method for the purposes of collectively imagining the future of a community asset.
Composition of graphic and sonic works through the improvisers' co-creation
(2021)
author(s): Laura Toxvaerd
published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
Taking my compositions as a point of departure, the project investigates the improvisers’ co-creation in the compositional process. The composer (in this case, me) explores how improvisers’ ideas can be integrated into the development of the compositions, and explores what impact the integration has on the works of art. In the project, graphic scores are being designed, through the means of which I am seeking to bring forth new aesthetic forms of expressions. Along the way in this project, I have created new compositions that came to be drawn out as scores, which were continually adapted and re-arranged on the basis of the improvising musicians’ concert performances of the existing compositions. The working method could be characterized as an iterative artistic developmental process, which shuttled back and forth between my own compositional work, together with the design and elaboration of the graphic scores, and videotaped rehearsals and performances of my compositions with the collaborating musicians.
'quiet citadel' is a site-specific, participatory music project that examines music-making and the purposes that music can serve. I made 'quiet citadel' as part of the Hinge Arts Residency with Springboard for the Arts. They describe the fellowship as a community development program that activates arts programming related to the historic Fergus Falls State Hospital, or "the Kirkbride." Presented in four sections, this exposition offers a case study of how I instrumentalized my music-making and music-sharing to assist the residents of Fergus Falls, a small town in rural Minnesota, in determining what to do with the disused Fergus Falls State Hospital, or "the Kirkbride." All told, this exposition provides an example of using music as a research method for the purposes of collectively imagining the future of a community asset.open exposition comments (0)