In this workshop, we will go on a quick journey to a small country in Eastern Europe called Bulgaria. Together, we will try to find the deep resonance of our body through physical and vocal improvisation in this music style. At the end, we will learn to sing simple, local songs and learn a little bit more about their Bulgarian roots. All voices welcomed; no previous vocal training necessary!

viktorianikolova.com

In many forms of institutionalized music, there is an assumption that a loudspeaker should be ‘invisible’: that the best loudspeakers are those that convey audio as transparently as possible. This workshop session explores musical critiques of this premise. After a short talk and discussion of experimental loudspeaker composition, the workshop features a series of short, interactive listening exercises where participants can get to know their own at-home/computer loudspeakers—and the different ways that they can be seen, heard, and reimagined.

saraconstant.ca

Let's use our voice to express ourselves! We can use nonsensical syllables, imitate what we hear or just simply make up sounds. Once we have explored our platter of expressive voice, it is time to let go and immerse ourselves in an experimental jam. Join the fun; no previous vocal training needed!

namierasman.com

This workshop will serve as an introduction to Mary Overlie’s Viewpoints, an approach to “non-hierarchical” composition that tries to to reframe the composing and improvising process from one of “creation and origination” to one of “observation and participation.” Viewpoints asks the artist to consider themselves in their surroundings and to “discern” structures and gestures from their environment, as opposed to “imposing” them. We will explore the technical language of this methodology, work as a group to develop the skills it asks for, and then split into small groups for improvising and composing.

mdenneymusic.com

A New Burst Of Bloom is an open-ended improvisational game to engage smaller groups of performers within a large ensemble. In this session, we will learn to play this game using visual cards, creating real-time cues to encourage collaboration and connection across a big group. Please bring an instrument (of any kind).

mattendahl.com

While living these uncertain times, this workshop seeks to create a telematic sounding connection through listening, improvisation, meditation, and dreams between the participants. It is based on the books and teachings of Pauline Oliveros, IONE and Heloise Gold. This workshop is open for musicians and non-musicians; please dress comfortably and bring an instrument, object and/or your body to improvise. Mar is a Deep Listening® Certificate Holder since 2016.

maralzamora.net

This workshop is open to anybody regardless of musical experience and background. It will consist of various listening exercises and creative prompts encouraging the participant to investigate their own associations with various sounds in relation to the world around them.

grimm.town

We’ll experiment with the latency and phasing that are unavoidable in virtual music-making, using them generatively rather than trying to minimize them. For example, two parts that sound aligned to one person might sound misaligned to another, and we can use this effect to build up a polyrhythmic texture of parts that are related but offset. We'll explore Zoom effects like this and culminate with a collective performance.

benrempel.com

How do we achieve the liveliness of performance in a digital world? This workshop invites you to unite with us in the virtual space, reimagine different ways of togetherness and create group improvisation performances with multisensory experiences. It is not only a composition of performers but a choreography of media, frontstage and backstage.

mystudio.design

A short workshop regarding intercultural collaboration across traditions with different musical symbolisms and conceptual frameworks. This decidedly non-technical workshop will deal with interpersonal communication in a variety of musical ensembles, focusing primarily on the Javanese concepts of ngelmu, rasa, and lagu batin and how these concepts can be applied to the development of new compositions for any ensemble, or even for non-musical performance.

haywardsound.com

How might the materials all around us function as musical scores? How might our relationship with ‘things’ and sound connect us to our environments? In this workshop, we explore discussions and exercises around these questions. No previous music training necessary!

jeremywrosenstock.github.io

jurytoshkobayashi-mackay.bandcamp.com

From manipulating playback parameters to burying records in the garden, explore sampling techniques that utilize time & place with heather and reina! How do these techniques allow us to compose time?? How does rethinking time allow us to compose differently?? How can we actually incorporate these concepts into our processes?? Join us to find out :^)

hmmease.com

reina

In the last few years, meditation has helped me tremendously with performance. I used to not able to ‘perform’ at 100% capacity because I suffered from performance anxiety. I have learned that controlling your breathing with various techniques will calm your mind and body in a way that allows you to think clearly. By channeling the mindset you achieve during meditation, you can access your full potential. This has especially helped me with improvisation, because meditation can allow for a deeper level of focus, and more careful attention and awareness. In this workshop, we will work on an alternating breathing exercise, pranayama breathing technique, and meditation.

erikadohi.com

Much of my formal musical training is in Jazz, the improvisational structures of which can be extremely rigorous and explicit. Yet their explicitness and even mechanistic defintion can foreclose other ways of knowing "what one is doing" when one improvises, and hierarchizes explicit knowing over implicit, body-based knowing. Contemporary dance uses the word "score" to mean a variety of things, all relating to the clarity and the structure of their improvisational constraints. I feel that musicians have much to learn from dance scores surrounding defining and perceiving decision procedures through the dance-definition of score-making. I'd like to present a bit about how my beginnings in dance have informed my exploration of improvisation.

soundcloud.com/tovakardonne

How can composers directly engage an audience with their artmaking practice? Can improvisatory works be used to create a shared sense of ownership between artists and communities? What kind of scenarios invite discovery and encourage interpersonal understanding? This workshop will explore the power of participatory works and group dynamics via handheld electronic instruments called Synthbees. Freed from conventional instrumentation and practices, the Synthbees will empower attendees of all abilities to make game-based and action-oriented pieces using sound, light, and gesture.

davysumner.com

This workshop will explore ideas behind thinking about music linearly versus vertically. Horizontal or linear music can be followed like a through thread in a tapestry but doesn’t always necessarily need to be the featured component of a composition. It may also be surrounded by material that emphasizes or de-emphasizes the line in various ways. These are our vertical structures in music (harmonies, orchestration, density, etc.). In our workshop, we will improvise horizontal musical lines and experiment with what happens to the lines as they are surrounded by other vertical textures that we create. We will also explore this topic through the use of non-traditionally notated scores. My hope is that this workshop allows the participants to explore these two musical axes and be mindful about using line as a concept in their future improvisations and compositions.

alexislamb.com

Having been born and raised in Iran in the midst of the longest conventional war of the 20th century, I came to know the immense moving power of music at a young age. I believe music had an important role in propagating the Iranian revolution of 1979. Following the revolution, the Iranian government closely monitored people's access to music, and often used music to unite and influence people in times of crises (such as during the Iran-Iraq war). As an Iranian-Canadian musician living in a time of extreme political sensitivity, when my country of birth is on the brink of a conflict with the United States (where I lived for years and received some of my musical training), I see my role as a cultural ambassador to be an extremely important one. In this workshop, I will speak about how music can respond to, inspire, or reinforce social movements, including those relating to advocation of human rights, peace and social justice.

imanhabibi.com

Jacinta Clusellas will present music from her album "El Pájaro Azul (The Blue Bird)" and her bilingual play with music "Azul Otra Vez (Blue, Revisited)" which are both inspired by Latin American poetry and short stories by the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darío. Jacinta will intersperse her music with a conversation on the creative relationships that arise between theatre and music. Together, we’ll explore connections between poetry, dramaturgy, multi-linguistic artistic communication, interdisciplinary collaborations and more.

jacintaclusellasmusic.com

Why do some people feel unable to make music, not good enough or not “musically inclined”? Nick Hon will facilitate a living room style open discussion/performance on what it means to "make it" as a musician/artist, investigating why that is often prioritized. We will talk about music as both a product and/or a creative act, and begin deconstructing what it means to "make" music, looking into what is it about music that we value and why. During the discussion we can address specialization and occupational identities, in and outside of the arts, asking questions about our own constructions/ideas/framings of our societies and how that has affected what it means to "be" musical / a musician.

While microtonality and non-diatonic scale systems have been ubiquitous around the world and throughout history, many non-academic composers shy away from microtonal music for its inaccessibility. I’ve recently been exploring and researching alternative approaches to microtonality for us non-academic composers who do things by ear, as opposed to following strict scale systems like the 13-tone scale, etc. We can touch on historic methods, like Just Intonation and regional tuning systems, and I can share a few approaches I’ve developed for my own music that can add a new layer of richness and direction to harmonies and chord progressions.

justinwright.ca

Can we keep pushing the envelop with classical style singing? Trained in opera, I am attached to the range, stamina and projection without microphone afforded to me through bel canto style. But interest in cross genre work, 'untrained' vocal timbres, electronic manipulations and changing concert venues make classical singing less necessary and appealing, even to myself. What's an opera singer to do? I have some ideas, and am looking for more!

elizabethabaker.com

For both dancers looking to branch out into the sonic world as well as musicians looking to explore expression in the spatial world. This workshop includes a one hour warm up, introduction to the interactive technology, improvisational time, and ends with the learning of a short original sonic movement piece by Elizabeth A. Baker.

elizabethabaker.com

Outside, by the willow by the pond, we will create some miniature pieces for each other after “physicalizing” present and absent elements of our habitual creative practice. This can be a launching point for a series of instant mini performances and conversation. We might then gain a bit more of an understanding of the emergent ecology of our practices as a cohort that we can weave into the programming of our final concert together.

benfinleymusic.com

In this workshop, I want to reconsider sound for its vibrational affect, and undo a privileging of sound not just as heard, but as for human listeners. I believe that by exploring this through musical gestures, we can create new ways of being and acting that take into account the material existence of our resources—the fragility of our instruments, the uniqueness of every performer’s body, the infrastructure supporting musical performance as we know it, and even the idea of what we want to experience in music as a performer or audience. This workshop could and probably would involve several modes—discussion of literature reflecting on sound, new materialisms, and the posthuman; performing pre-existing works which are open to a variety of ‘worldly’ perspectives, such as text scores by Pauline Oliveros and Manfred Werder, (to name but a few) and the workshopping of small scenario-like pieces focused on the musicality of the unconventionally musical: object performance, performative listening, ‘musicalization’ of everyday gestures, and other such potential scenarios. It would hopefully be something that takes full advantage of the residency’s surroundings, using material resources considerately and renewably, and human resources with empathy and respect. From this, hopefully participants could incorporate environmental and contemplative practices into their other pursuits, with an understanding of musical community as involving human and nonhuman actors.

benzuckersounds.com

An exploration into finding connections between non-musical subjects and music to deepen our sense of interpretation.

nahresol.com

Mike shares his approach and philosophy behind programming algorithmic “instruments” (in the open-source software SuperCollider) for use improvisationally, compositionally, and in installations.

mccrmck.com

Using kinetic objects items to uncover new musical expressions. Extracting sound from non-aural gestures, and animating the inanimate. Group improvisation using my in progress ""laser-interface"" to narrate and guide musical ideas.

davysumner.com

An exploration of the Creative Act via improvisation, based on the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot of Marseille.

jacquesburtin.com

A workshop on a specific graphic notation language I have been developing over the last couple of years. The notation deals with aspects of sound/collaboration such as density, presence, and color, instead of more tradition western elements like rhythm and pitch. I'll bring a set of scores and teach the notation to everyone, then we can play them together!

sarahbellereid.com

A workshop sharing techniques and thoughts on how to compose music that supports the story of the lyrics, whether concurrently composing lyrics or setting an existing text. Various topics will be covered, including where to start, how to deduce what is important to preserve from the mood of an existing text, when to support the lyrics musically and when to let the music contrast with the message, and how to take ideas from works we already love. This workshop will not hold specific to any one genre, but explore what we can learn from anything we love.

marikagalea.com

Using bells in music does not seem to be a new idea as it has a long history from Medieval times to present, not to mention their application in different cultures from ancient times, and the entire repertoire of superstitions and spiritual beliefs about them. In my project, however, I am working with imperfect bells: cowbells, sheep bells, rustic bells, etc. It is their imperfection which interests me. They are among the most commonly disregarded acoustic components of human’s culture, whether as musical instruments or practical or ceremonial sound objects. My workshop is a part of my research-creation project called “soundscapes in the mist” which is based on the spectral properties of bells and their power to define space and to mark the auditory landscape. My music has several elements of indeterminacy which allows the performers to make decisions and modify the final output within a rigid structure.

roozbehtabandeh.com

Using mindfulness, instinct and deep inward & local listening to guide our ears to alternate tuning rather than plugging into our engrained equal temperament.

kathryn-shuman.com

Introducing very basic elements of spectromorphological listening in order to create a collaborative performance score from the sounds of Westben's natural environment. By practicing reduced listening practices (listening without concern for the CAUSE of a sound) and applying simple graphical representations of observed sound, participants will create a sonic map of several locations, ultimately using this map as a score for performance with a mix of their own instruments and/or objects found in the surrounding environment.

soundcloud.com/ryangastonmusic

Mindfulness exercises for creative practice, a series of individual and collective practices that can be done to encourage awareness, intention, and beginner's mind.

mollyjonesmusic.com

I’ll offer suggestions on how ensembles that embrace each member's unique musical and life background is one way of counteracting the Meaning Crisis of our times. In complement to that philosophical framework, I'll be giving some non-genre-specific materials, games and listening activities aimed at improvising composers.

benfinleymusic.com