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Scattered Light – unruly timbre as form
10 participants
Registration required
Open for participants who play an instrument; prior experience with improvisation not necessary
English spoken
In classical lineages of instrumental pedagogy, timbre and sound quality are some of the most tightly controlled qualities of playing. What if instrumental timbre was unleashed as an unruly, wild, and generative aspect of instrumental performance? What if the meeting between technique and instrumental technology were recast as tekhne, a process by which one reveals an instrument’s peculiar, singular and latent material qualities? How would we be encouraged to play if we were to listen to the instrument as a conversational partner of many sedimented histories, and throw out colonial notions of instrumental “mastery”?
Using these questions as guideposts, the workshop participants will explore timbral instabilities, inharmonicities, irreducibilities, and limit cases of their own instruments through conversation and playing. We’ll focus on timbral ambiguity, overtones and the spatial qualities of acoustic sound as a way of embodying destabilization and multiplicity. The workshop will culminate in an extended improvisation session.
© Weston Olencki