Ensemble & Ensemble of Me – What I Think About When I Think About Improvisation
(2024)
author(s): Ivar Grydeland
published in: Norwegian Academy of Music
This exposition is a copy of Ivar Grydeland's artistic research fellowship project (2011-2015) at The Norwegian Academy of Music, financed by The Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme. The exposition was redesigned within The Research Catalogue in 2024. The content is identical to the original documentation.
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Ensemble & Ensemble of Me is an artistic research fellowship project carried out at the Norwegian Academy of Music, as part of The Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme between 2011 and 2015. In this project I produced solo improvisations deriving from the music of two improvising ensembles to which I belong: Dans les arbres and Huntsville, and I produced collective improvisations with the ensembles.
The project’s key questions:
- What are my concepts when improvising with the ensembles and when improvising alone?
- How do the ensemble improvisations inform my solo improvisations?
- What do I think about when I think about our and my own improvisations?
The Haruki Murakami-paraphrase in the sub-heading indicates a process of on-going reflection upon what I regard as key aspects when I improvise. More specifically, what I regard as key aspects in the music of Dans les arbres and Huntsville, as well as for my own solo improvisations. These reflections reveal key aspects and main challenges that emerged during my attempts to create solo works informed by the ensembles. The reflections are chiefly documented in the form of a personal encyclopaedia. The encyclopaedia includes audio and visual examples, both from the final artistic results and from artistic activity during the project.
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?