…a celebration of the practice of improvisation in all its diversity, complexity and, perhaps, contradictions
Not strictly speaking a Stet Lab event (see note below), but the musical automaton and machine improviser io 0.0.1 beta++ will be performing with Stet Lab founder/curator Han-earl Park (guitar) and past guest artists Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder (saxophones) at Blackrock Castle Observatory (Cork, Ireland) on Wednesday, May 26, 2010. [Details…] note: I’m plugging the performance here because Franziska’s appearance [...]
I debated this, not for a long time, but I nonetheless tossed around the idea before leaving my volume pedal at home. I really felt I needed to physically part with the volume pedal rather than simply disconnecting it from the signal chain, and since the it’s grafted onto the footstool, I’d require some other [...]
Since Paul Stapleton asked for feedback, I’ve decided to answer the query with three (plus one) simple questions: 1. Is ‘success’ (however that’s defined) a meaningful idea in approaching (as listener or performer) improvisation? I’ve tried to address this issue from the other side before, so let me paraphrase that here: What is the status [...]
The flooding in Cork city has affected the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. The Gallery has offered generous behind-the-scenes support to Stet Lab, and they’ve hosted improvised music performances by guests of the Lab (including Paul Dunmall, Don Malone, Mark Sanders, John Godfrey, Mick O’Shea, Franziska Schroeder, Bruce Coates and Jamie Smith), numerous Stet Lab (ir)regulars and occasional drop-ins (including Han-earl Park, Neil O’Loghlen, Niwel Tsumbu and Christian Martin).
I’m sitting in London writing this. [I’m typing this up in Cork several days later, however….] My initial idea for this report, fueled by my less-than-wonderful playing with Paul Dunmall (Paul, of course, is never less than fantastic) [info on this performance…], was to write about the tightrope balancing act between playing something—crafting something—‘musically’ satisfactory (however [...]
Stet Lab (ir)regulars Marian Murray and Tony O’Connor will be performing at the launch concert of the CD, Rediscovering Locality: A Sonology of Cork Sound Art+. As part of ArtTrail, the event takes place at 8:00 pm on Sunday, November 15th 2009, at the Savoy Mezzanine, Cork, Ireland.
Since Piaras Hoban published an algorithmically generated text for his Lab report, and since I’m not averse to conversations with technics, I thought I’d follow his example with a conversation with Eliza (in this case Charles Hayden’s Java implementation of Eliza), the grandmother of Turing-test contenders. Here’s a more-or-less unedited conversation on the October Stet [...]
I’ve said previously that “I’d be lying if I said I did not have allegiances—in idiom, in tradition, and in practice—I do, but I want to stress the possibility of trans-cultural meetings and creative (mis)understandings.” I don’t subscribe to a silly ideology of some impossibly impartial, neutral, transcendental performance, free of tradition, history, identity. I’m [...]
Somewhere in Belfast, May 16, 2009 Snippets from a conversation between three musicians: “Man, I should play more free jazz.” “It’s not an idiom at all…” “…a tradition? …a practice?” “Just play all over the keyboard.” “It is so much fun.” “Why don’t I do this all the time?” “There’s nothing better.” “There really isn’t.” [...]