Something Rich & Strange: An Improvisation Workshop With ...

Performers

View Profile »

Ben Grossman

Presented by:

North Wind Concerts

Event Details

Join us for an afternoon of musical experimentation and discovery, guided by one of the bright lights of the improvised music scene. We will explore all kinds of creative engagement with music: familiar, new, old, and never before heard! Using improvisation, open scores, and subjecting the familiar to re-contextualising processes, we’ll seek to find new and fun ways of relating to each other and to sound. 

At last year’s workshop with Ben, participants made surprising and inspiring discoveries about music, themselves, and the connections between, in a friendly and encouraging environment.

All instruments and voices welcome, all levels of experience with creative music welcome.

"Improvisation is the art of becoming sound. It is the only art in which a human being can and must become the music he or she is making. It is the art of constant, attentive and dangerous living in every moment. It is the art of stepping outside of time, disappearing in it, becoming it. It is both the fine art of listening and responding and the more refined art of silence. It is the only musical art where the entire "score" is merely the self and the others, and the space and moment where and when this happens. Improvisation is the only musical art which is predicated entirely on human trust and love."  Alvin Curran

Ben Grossman is a busy musician and sound artist: improviser, studio musician, composer, and noisemaker, currently based in Montreal. He works in many fields, having played on over 100 CDs, soundtracks for film and television, composition and sound design for theatre, dance, installations, work designed for radio transmission, and live performances spanning early medieval music to experimental electronics. Ben's tools of choice are electronics, percussion, and especially, the vielle à roue (hurdy gurdy), a contemporary electro-acoustic string instrument with roots in the European middle ages. Through extended techniques, and sometimes electronic processing, Ben seeks to use it as a physical interface into sound creation, spontaneous composition and the exploration of acoustics, form and extended aesthetics. www.macrophone.org

Featured Program

Saturday November 22

1:30 – 4 p.m.

Heliconian Hall, 35 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto

If you want to participate but the cost is prohibitive, let us know – we can help you out!

Write to us at northwindconcerts@gmail.com