Sculpting Air In The Sub Habitat

Lotte Anker

Sculpting Air in The Sub Habitat (subtitle: Texture and Form in Composition for Larger Ensemble of Improvisers) is an exploration and unfolding of creative processes in composing for a larger ensemble (6+ musicians) of improvisers as well as the processes in the ensemble rehearsals and concerts. In Sculpting Air, I am both composer and performer. I work with an ensemble created for this project: Sub Habitat. Sub Habitat members are: Lotte Anker (DK), Mazen Kerbaj (GER/LBN), Katt Hernandez (S/USA), Nina de Heney (S), Sten Sandell (S), Andrea Neumann (GER), Burkhard Beins (GER) Sculpting Air grew out of a need to deepen, (re)examine and challenge my compositional practice (including aesthetic preferences and inclinations) within a larger ensemble of improvisers, and I went into the project looking for something: more or less vague, fragmented notions of particular sonic and textural qualities and structural concepts. Notions of a higher degree of connectedness between predetermined and undetermined elements in composition etc. The project is based on my own compositional work and 4 ensemble Sessions and Session concerts during 2020-22. It includes examples and reflections from these processes, and through them I try to articulate answers to the following research questions: Based on the concepts of texture, MODE and LIBRARY, how can I develop new compositional tools for a larger ensemble of improvisers in a music that reflects the sonic palette and expression of the individual musician, the expression and identity of the ensemble as an entity, and my artistic intention? Including: How can these tools be deployed as sculpting materials in a large form piece, where the predetermined and indeterminate elements mutually reinforce each other and thus help to extend the musical space? How can I explore the sonic potential of the ensemble in dialogue with the musicians? How does the ensemble's overall expression inform my compositional work and vice versa? In score form, how can I develop a specific vocabulary, concepts and notational forms that clarify my artistic intention and convey the balance between the predetermined and indeterminate elements of the composition?

Sculpting Air in the Sub Habitat

Texture and Form in Composition for larger Ensemble of Improvisers

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you

Sub Habitat:

Mazen Kerbaj, Katt Hernandez, Nina de Heney, Sten Sandell, Andrea Neumann, Burkhard Beins

RMC - Research and development

Lars Brinck

Søren Kjærgaard

Niclas Nørby Hundahl

Lars Rex Christensen (sound & technical coordinator)

Peer-reviewers:

David Toop

Søren Kjærgaard

Andreas Rosforth (video filming, stills and editing)

John Fomsgaard/Karma Crew (audio recording, mixing)

Thomas Vang (audio recording, The Village Recording)

Helen Clara Helmsley: proof reading

References

Beins, B. ao edit 2011. Echtzeitmusik, Berlin. Haenisch, M.: Emergence: On a Theoretical Term in Current Improvisation Research, Wolke

Cox, C. and Warner D. edit 2004. Audio Culture, Lewis,G.E: Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives, Continuum

Feldman, Morton. 2006. Morton Feldman Says. Selected interviews and lectures 1964-1987 Hyphen Press.London

Graphème. A publication for experimental music scores. Volume 1 2021. Published by smallestfunctionalunit https://smallestfunctionalunit.com/

Hodkinson, Juliana. 2007. Presenting Absence: Constitutive Silences in music and sound art since the 1950s. Ph.D.thesis Department of Musicology University of Copenhagen

Lewis, George E. 2008 A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, University of Chicago Press

Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2005. The Eyes of the Skin - Architecture and the Senses, John Wiley & Sons

Schaeffer, Pierre. 2017. Treatise on Musical Objects, University of California

Takemitsu, Toru .1995. Confronting Silence, Fallen Leaf Press

Zanussi, Per. 2017. Natural Patterns. Music making with an ensemble of improvisers.

University of Stavanger/Norwegian Artistic Research Programme

Nevrin, Klas 2018. Music in Disorder: Counterplay, Complexity and Collective Improvisation

https://pin-c.sdu.dk/assets/track-3i-nevrin-p183-191.pdf

Working with Revoid Ensemble

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/268532/268533

Articles on ma

KyotoJournal/Gunter Nitschke