Tactile Paths: An Introduction to Notation for Improvisers
Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe
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Additional Description:
Since the 1960s, many composers and musicians have worked at the interface of notation and improvisation. The list is long and diverse: Richard Barrett, Anthony Braxton, Earle Brown, Cornelius Cardew, Malcolm Goldstein, Vinko Globokar, George E. Lewis, Annea Lockwood, Pauline Oliveros, Bob Ostertag, Wadada Leo Smith, John Zorn, and myself are just a few examples. Thinking about this body of work as a whole – connected by methods and practices that belie aesthetic and historical differences – has much to recommend itself to both practitioners and scholars. As I detail in my Ph.D. dissertation "Tactile Paths", it reveals hidden assumptions about notation and improvisation beyond this repertoire alone. It also broadens our awareness of the many ways in which performers and composers approach collectivity and collaboration.
This presentation introduces some of the dynamics, potentials, and problems that this music shares, centering on the following questions:
- What aspects of improvising can be fruitfully addressed through notation? -In what ways can notation incorporate improvisers’ unique and embodied performance practices into the compositional process?
- How does notation construct, deconstruct, or reconstruct improvisers’ relationships to each other? How do performers listen to each other differently with and without a score?
- How does music involving notation for improvisers encourage us to rethink the way we conceptualize and talk about musical labor?
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