There’s this balancing act between your body and the mechanics of elastic collisions, and Newtonian physics, and all those things, and you’re creating music from balancing these things out…. [Watch to the rest…]
The word I use sometimes is ‘interface.’ So if you start thinking about creativity as this thing that happens between surfaces, that’s interesting in a way that the idea of the single auteur is much less interesting…. And as an artist you can do interesting things by kind of shifting you position within that boundary. [Watch to the rest…]
Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
“Once I have those parameters, I can reconfigure the body and the instrument so it kind of runs itself….
“The word I use sometimes is ‘interface.’ So if you start thinking about creativity as this thing that happens between surfaces, that’s interesting in a way that the idea of the single auteur is much less interesting…. And as an artist you can do interesting things by kind of shifting you position within that boundary.” [Listen to the rest…]
Han-earl Park is also performing with rit. and Una Lee, in Dublin (24), Letterkenny (25), Derry (26) and Belfast (27). See the performance diary for details.
Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
Han-earl Park is also performing in London with Lara Jones and Pat Thomas (March 20), performing a solo set in Leeds (22), and, with rit. and Una Lee, in Dublin (24), Letterkenny (25), Derry (26) and Belfast (27). See the performance diary for details.
Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
Cyborgs, bodies, chaos, simulation and improvisation…
Han-earl Park will visit Newcastle to perform solo, and discuss [with Corey Mwamba and Graeme Wilson] his ongoing interest in chaotic systems, computation, and the collision of physiology and physics in his music, from guitar technique to the construction of musical automata.
Also performing will be Johnny Hunter’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Sextet (Johnny Hunter: drums; Mark Hanslip: saxophone; Seth Bennett: bass; Gemma Bass: violin; Aby Vulliamy: viola; and Michael Bardon: ’cello).
To celebrate British Science Week 2022 music promoters Jazz North East are proud to present ‘The Sound of Science.’ With additional support from Newcastle University’s Faculty of Science and Gosforth Civic Theatre, audiences are welcomed to experience a series of concerts and discussions drawing connections between science and music.
Programmed events will specifically explore the interplay of chemistry, physics, ecology and biology, and the ways in which these disciplines have been employed by, and communicated through, composers and musicians. We will hear from 28 musicians, artists and scientists across the four day event.
“From climate change to vaccines, the importance of science to the way we live has never been clearer. Its relationship to music however is rarely explored and it is for that reason we have assembled those working in and between these two seemingly disparate fields. Our events shine a spotlight on the role of science within music composition and improvisation, with a view to inspiring audiences new to one or both subjects.
“Presented and discussed through music making practice, this project aims to increase understanding of science and its social implications, and build audience confidence in discussing these issues. Inviting all ages and every level of expertise, the festival will spark new ideas around how science and music can be communicated and combined.” — Wesley Stephenson (Festival Producer)
Acknowledgements and Thanks
Jazz North East gratefully acknowledges and thanks the support of Arts Council England, Golsoncott Foundation, Scops Arts Trust, the Royal Society of Chemistry, Newcastle University Faculty of Science, British Science Association, Soapbox Science, Euan Preston and Palace of Science, Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Fonds Podium Kunsten Performing Arts Fund NL, Jazz North, Sound and Music, Sunderland Culture, New Jazz and Improvised Music Recordings and Gosforth Civic Theatre.
Also in March 2022
Han-earl Park is also performing in and Leeds, and in London with Lara Jones and Pat Thomas, and, with rit. and Una Lee, in Dublin, Letterkenny, Derry and Belfast. See the performance diary for details.
Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
Plus, on the previous day (Tuesday, December 11), at 3:30pm, Han-earl Park will also be giving a presentation at the Colloquium at the Varèsezaal, Instituut voor Sonologie. He may be talking about:
Improvising automata, and improvising cyborgs; performing stories of salvation through technology, and amplifying the voices of everyday artifacts. Cautionary tales, and small triumphs, from the practice of an institutionally unaffiliated artist-engineer, as he attempts to evolve techniques and approaches while riding the lines between ambiguity, didacticism, the improvisative, virtuosity, and neo-Ludditism.
Quick thanks for all involved in the seminar/performance at the Sonic Arts Research Centerearlier this month. My hat goes off to all the administrative and technical folk: Chris Corrigan, Pearl Young, Marian Hanna, and, especially, Craig Jackson (who got the A/V up and running for the presentation). Kudos also to Miguel Angel Ortiz Pérez for acting as host when Justin was busy with other business.
Finally, big thanks to Caroline Pugh for the noise, out of the box choices, the occasional melody, and the momentary glimpse of semantics, and to Justin Yang for sharing the stage, and for inviting me in the first place.
Tomorrow (Thursday, March 13, 2014) at 1:10pm: a performance by Han-earl Park (guitar) with Justin Yang (saxophones) and Caroline Pugh (voice) takes place at the Sonic Lab, (Sonic Arts Research Center, Queen’s University, Belfast, N. Ireland) [map…]. Free admission. Here’s the program:
And at 1:00pm today (Wednesday, 12 March), Han-earl Park will be giving a seminar presentation at the Sonic Lab.
Thanks in to the members of my local trio (as Richard pointed out, it’s very hard not to feel the pull of tribalism), Ulrich Mitzlaff and Gascia Ouzounian; to the emergent section leader of the neighboring trio Pedro Rebelo (with whom, during the rehearsal/trial run, I would share looks when things (creatively) self-destructed); to the Simon Rose-Dan Goren-Paul Stapleton unit which, in the best possible sense, seemed to have an agenda entirely their own; to the two bass players, Dom Lash and Christopher Williams, who entertained my left ear; to the remarkable drummers, Gustavo Aguilar and Steve Davis, who always knew, better than the rest of us put together, how to push/pull such a large ensemble during free play; to Franziska Schroeder for soaring over the group; Chris Brown for the asymmetrical hocket between Pedro, Justin and myself; to the electro-dudes, Mark Trayle and Richard Scott, who always sounded like themselves (especially the bass sample, Richard) and who generously gave visual/physical cues in relation to their performance; to the other guitarist, Nuno Rebelo, who artfully avoided collisions—I think we played well together, even if we rarely played at the same time; and to Justin Yang for creating, with Gustavo, that all too brief Shepp/Sanders moment—a moment of ascension—that helped to remind me what this was all about.
And of course, thanks to Pedro, Steve and Franziska for hosting, organizing and inviting, and to Evan Parker for taking time to guide us and the music.
I feel privileged to have been part of a large ensemble of improvisers of that caliber… and to have, through necessity and accident, found myself seated in the ideal position on stage (right in the middle—between the two pianos, the two drummers). I’m still thinking through the implications of tactics within such a context (especially in open improvisation), and am itching to do it again.
The final event in this year’s festival is a celebration of improvisation with one of the most renowned free improvisors of our time – saxophonist Evan Parker. A day of workshops and rehearsals led by Parker culminates in a public performance by an improvisation collective especially created for this event with musicians from around the world including Mark Trayle (electronics), Gascia Ouzounian (violin), Chris Brown (piano), Paul Stapleton (percussion), Dan Goren (trumpet), Don Nichols (percussion), Simon Rose (sax), Gustavo Aguilar (percussion), Han-earl Park (guitar), Ulrich Mitzlaff (’cello), Tasos Stamou (zither), Dominic Lash (double bass), Christopher Williams (bass), Nuno Rebelo (guitar), Richard Scott (synth), Steven Davis (drums), Pedro Rebelo (piano), Justin Yang (sax) and Franziska Schroeder (sax).
May I suggest a much more promising line of investigation…. it is the musical process known as group improvisation. This offers an escape from a composer’s inevitable intentions forced on the hierarchically inferior performers (drones?) and leads to a unique sound event made by a group of equal individuals working in social equality in relation to the unique environment (acoustics, listeners, etc.) of the performance. (Evan Parker)
The instrument—that’s the matter—the stuff—your subject. (Steve Lacy)
Approaches to music analysis based on ideas of musical ‘material’ and their ‘manipulations’ privilege simplicity and coherence, creating problems when approaching performance, and, in particular, real-time interactive improvisation. Such approaches assume rigidly hierarchical causal processes and simplistic notions of agency and volition. The effects of such analysis render physicality and the body largely invisible or, at best, peripheral to the site of creation.
Donna J. Haraway’s cyborg, a playful and disruptive boundary-breaching entity, suggest a way to theorize the relationships between the various entities (such as bodies, instruments and traditions) during improvisative play. Partly a socialist feminist subversion and reinvention of Bruno Latour’s network, cyborgism also promises a mode of analysis that takes relationships and interaction seriously while avoiding the easy impulse to erase difference, complexity and contradictions.
With particular focus on techniques associated with Derek Bailey, I will reverse engineer and demonstrate modes for illuminating cyborg relations; arguing that the cyborg is a possible generator and subject of improvisative play. Techniques such as tone clusters and natural harmonics can amplify the historical and physical contingencies of the guitar-guitarist network, exploding and exposing normally hidden instabilities (and creative possibilities) in that relationship. Tone clusters, for example, may be identical on the fretboard and the keyboard in terms of a discorporate abstraction of ‘musical material,’ but they have very distinct implications for practice (their significance in terms of traditions) and performance (their physical articulations). Consequently, what might be articulated in improvisation is not ‘unfettered choice’ or ‘limited musical material,’ but the dynamic interactions of agencies and identities, and of the temporary and the durable.
The presentation will be a practitioner’s report, and a demonstration of baby steps towards a mode of music analysis that foregrounds real-time interaction. I argue that, if performance in general, and improvisation in particular, is the (re)enactment and (re)negotiation of identities, boundaries and relationships, then the space between entities must be a site of (re)construction and (trans)formation. It is in the (re)negotiations, and the fluid motions, of the boundaries, the (temporary) creation of hybrids and networks that radical music can be improvised.
