4 Sundays in January 2010 from 1-3pm
Machine Project
1200 D North Alvarado
Los Angeles, CA 90026

http://machineproject.com/events/2010/01/10/music-improvisation-workshop/

Series organized by Rory Cowal, Sara Roberts and Isaac Schankler

ALL WORKSHOPS + OPENING PERFORMANCE ARE FREE!

Friday 1/8 – 8pm Opening Performance
Sunday 1/10 – 1pm Principles of Improvisation with Rory Cowal
Sunday 1/17 – 1pm Advanced Principles of Improvisation with Rory, 2pm Intro to Cobra with Isaac Schankler
Sunday 1/24 – 1pm Advanced Cobra and Guerrilla Tactics with Isaac
Sunday 1/31 – 1pm Shape Note Singing Workshop directed by Jessica Catron and Daniel Brummel

**All workshops are hands-on so please bring an instrument or your voice and we will all play together!**

For this series of workshops, musicians of all levels and musical
backgrounds are invited to participate. Together, we will explore all
of the ways we can interact through music and the extraordinary sonic
worlds that arise as a result. As a full ensemble and in different
small ensemble combinations, we will find strategies for successfully
cooperating as a group while still asserting our individuality and
expressing our personal voices. We will use improvisation as a tool to
better understand structure and form in a performance. We will also
hone our compositional skills; while improvising, we must ask
ourselves, “what does this work need and how will my contribution add
to the character and evolution of the piece?” The fruits of our efforts
will be spontaneous and extraordinary works of art. Tapping into our
collective imagination and creativity, we will invent fantastic
textures of timbre, melody, harmony, and color.

We will explore these ideas further with John Zorn’s Cobra, a popular
and continually evolving improvisational game piece.

In Cobra, players respond to a variety of gestures and cards that
provide countless possibilities for musical interaction. However,
players wishing to strike out on their own can become “guerrillas” and
set their own agenda, making for an often unpredictable but always
compelling spectacle. The workshops will culminate in a performance
that incorporates all aspects of these improvisational strategies.

The series will close with a Shape Note Singing Workshop,
led by Jessica Catron and Daniel Brummel.

Come and learn as well as participate in a unique, alternative musical
language. Utilizing a few shapes instead of basic music notation, the
shape note form invites participants to hone in on harmonic structures
in large groups, allowing beautiful sounds to materialize among people
who have likely never sung together before. The music is easy, the
sound is joyously resonant, and all voices are welcome — a willingness
to sing is the only requirement.