Composing in Real-time

Workshop

Izumi Kimura and Cora Venus Lunny

Friday 14/4/23, 2–5pm
PROJECT ARTS CENTRE

Workshop: Composing in Real-time
Facilitators: Izumi Kimura and Cora Venus Lunny
Tickets: €5 (includes refreshments)

Improvisation, or spontaneous composition, is a tool for obtaining higher musicianship, instrumental technique, communication, confidence, flexibility, imagination, and sensitivity, all while having fun.

This workshop is primarily designed for performers and composers. However, we welcome all participants, including teachers, listeners and people from any fields or disciplines.

What do I need to bring?
Just bring your own curiosity for exploring and practicing improvisation together in a judgement-free space; and open mind and ear; and an ambition to welcome the unknown.

What is the process? 
We practice improvisation by improvising. We explore listening, independent thinking and how to make musical agreements in real time. There are exercises that get the ball rolling but primarily we learn to improvise by exploring interaction with each other. All participants will contribute by bringing their presence. In the shared space we can find entrances to the playground of musical possibility from any sound and silence. We will learn together how to trust our impulses and intuitions. Sound is the teacher.

What will I get from the experience? 
The outcome is unique to each individual, everyone will learn whatever she or he needs to learn the most. The goal is not to create a ‘finished’ music, but to nourish the environment for any seed of music to grow continuously. New music will emerge by the way of the process.

Music Current workshops are supported by the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin (www.cmc.ie). Participants resident on the island of Ireland, travelling from outside Dublin, can apply for a travel and subsistence bursary by contacting festival staff when attending workshop events, or by emailing contact info@dublinsoundlab.ie

“Improvisation means coming prepared, but not attached to the preparation. Everything flows into the creative act in progress. Come prepared, but be willing to accept interruptions and invitations. Trust that the product of your preparation is not your papers and plans, but yourself.”

“Interruption means having your concentration spoiled: but nothing can spoil your concentration if every change that comes into your sensorium is part of the game.”
– Stephen Nachmanovitch

“Sometimes we blur the distinction between art and life; sometimes we try to clarify it. We don’t stand on one leg. We stand on both.”

“A sound is a sound. To realize this one has to put a stop to studying music.”
– John Cage