NOW workshops online webinar concert
featuring workshop participants

FREE • Saturday April 9 3pm
register here
 

A concert featuring the workshop participants, as they remember through sound, the facilitators and workshops of the spring series.

NOW ​Improvisation Workshops Spring 2022 

Public Online Concert! 

April 9 at 3pm PST

Register for the Webinar Concert here.

FREE. Donations gratefully accepted here.

A webinar concert featuring workshop participants, as they remember through sound our spring series with the presentation of seven improvised pieces. This concert will be recorded.
 

Since 1978, the New Orchestra Workshop Society (NOW) has presented music improvisation workshops, offering space for exploration and participation. Our workshops are for improvisers of all levels of ability and ranges of experience, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, race or religion. We protect privacy in our workshops and adopt the We Have Voice Collective Code of Conduct.  Read more about NOW workshop policies here. For facilitator bios, visit here.

Program

What is Sound?

From the workshop with Lisa Cay Miller

I practise to free my mind, my instrument, and spaces of performance,

to come together so we may find something larger than ourselves.

Prompt: Sound has recently been used as a weapon (the ‘Freedom Convoys’ the LRAD Sound Cannon at Standing Rock). I believe we create sound to heal and connect to something larger than ourselves. In all of the spectrum of sound possibilities - what does sound mean to you?

Secret Duos

From the workshop with Ute Wassermann

Prompt: Choose a partner - the other person doesn’t know, they might pick someone else

Joy Play

From the workshop with - Mankwe Ndosi

"I consider myself a Culture Worker – an artist using creative practice to nurture and be useful to my community, my ancestors, and my planet."

Prompt: Have a conversation.

Star-filled Sky

From the workshop with - River (Cassandra) Blondin-Burt

“Through a deepening relationship with the land-body we call Earth, I explore a regenerative art and creation praxis that allows me to move through myriad contemporary settler-colonial social structures and ideologies with intent, and curiosity.”

Prompt: As an artist living in a human-centric society, otherwise known as The Anthropocene Era, how do you use sound to express your awareness, or connection to the wider world of other than human nations around you? This is an invitation to express, through music, your connection, or love, for the ocean, the mountains, or the star filled sky?

One small wind can raise much dust

From the workshop with Douglas R. Ewart

I am a composer, musician, instrument builder, educator, writer, conceptualist, craftsman, tailor, inventor, philosopher, and community activist. Over the past  fifty-years, my work has evolved into a confluence of indivisible practices. Each discipline aids and acts as a catalyst for the others, with music as the overarching galvanizing agent.

Prompt:

One

small

wind

can

raise

much

dust

Texture

From the workshop with Clyde Reed

My process: Gratitude to be making music and joyful expectations.

Prompt: Create a texture.

Enter Pause Exit

From the workshop with Adrian Avendaño

                         I am a percussionist, sound artist, and environmental technician. I am deeply inspired by the worlds that we navigate through (interior, exterior, and the spaces in-between). 

Prompt: Inspired by a workshop with Katie Duck - Enter. Pause. Exit.

How many different modular groupings can we create?