Thursday 6 July 2023, 8pm
ONe_Orchestra New is a large group of improvising musicians, and some dancers, brought together by Caroline Kraabel and made up of women, trans and non-binary people.
Exploring improvisation and identity. Even the milieu of improvised music can be an enclave that excludes, despite the perception that associates improvisation with limitlessness and freedom.
Questions
How do people who improvise feel and think DIFFERENTLY from each other on the subject? How do we avoid – or alter – any dominance of particular groups over the theory or practice of improvisation?
Does the risk-taking nature of improvisation make it easier for members of élites to shine in the field, because they have pre-existing socio-cultural capital that validates their experiments?
Or is improvisation easier for outsiders who are already primed to find alternative paths?
(If the answer to both questions is ‘yes’, how do we make the situation more fair?)
How are improvisers and listeners affected by their identities and cultural histories?
For improvisers who have experienced forms of oppression in music making and/or life, is the aim when making music merely to recapitulate existing power structures, but try to place themselves at the top? Or can we create new and fairer structures, structures that relate to our difference and equality?
If the improvisers are in some ways ‘the score’ of the improvisation, do improvisers who differ from the norm automatically produce improvisations that feel and sound otherwise?
Starting points
Distinctions between people are too often used to justify unequal treatment. The source and foundation of our music is that our equality springs from our shared humanity. We’re all different, but we’re all human beings and therefore of equal worth.
We can say that all instruments, all musical educations/cultures, and all sounds are different, and fundamentally of equal worth.
Our improvising together is what transmutes our histories and sounds into music.
We can say that the trumpet or saxophone is not automatically the prominent front-line instrument; the drum is not automatically the instrument that produces rhythms for the group, or the piano the one that provides harmonies. We have all learned roles and rules that apply to types of instruments or people, but we don’t have to stick to those roles.
We can start trying to shape the evolution of the music differently, at times escaping from conventional trajectories such as the gradual crescendo and volume associated with intensity....
Dynamics: be aware of the different dynamic range of each instrument/player.
Space: allow space for each and all.
Sounds: seek out and nurture sounds that are small, unexpected, “ugly”, misplaced, forbidden … the sounds that are “wrong”.
Performing: seek different ways to be in and share spaces and sounds.
https://oneorchestranew.com/
Instagram: @orchestra.new
Provisional line-up
- Khabat Abas: cello https://khabatabas.com/
- Dee Byrne: alto sax https://deebyrnemusic.com/
- Isidora Edwards: cello https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/artists/isidora-edwards/
- Damsel Elysium: double bass, violin https://www.instagram.com/damsel.elysium/
- Charlotte Keeffe: trumpet, flugelhorn https://www.charlottekeeffe.com/
- Shima Kobayashi: chromatic harmonica https://shimaharmonica.com/
- Caroline Kraabel: alto sax, voice http://www.masskraabel.com/
- Maya Leigh Rosenwasser: piano, percussion https://linktr.ee/mayaleighrosenwasser
- Sue Lynch: tenor sax, flute, clarinet https://suelynch.wordpress.com/
- Shama Rahman: sitar https://shamaverse.com/
- Cath Roberts: baritone sax https://cathrobots.co.uk/
- Emily Shapiro: clarinets
- Rosa Theodora: piano, marimba
- Olga Ksendzovska: piano, trombone, voice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsqpTc5l42E
- Sofia Vaisman Maturana: cello, poetry https://sofiavaisman.com/
- Lu Greco: dance
- Rosalie Bell: dance
- Livia Garcia: film scores
- Catherine Valve: film and documentation
Keep Your Laws Off My Body One_Orchestra New’s recent single in support of the right to bodily autonomy.
BENEFIT FOR UKRAINE ANEW
Our first-ever performance in April 2022 was a benefit for Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees. Now, fifteen months further into Russia’s war of gratuitous attritional aggression, the need is, if anything, greater.
If you have become inured to the news from Ukraine, fatigued by the daily repetition of images and reports of ever-increasing and widening destruction and conflict, please spare a thought for the evolving exhaustion of the millions for whom this is their inescapable daily reality!
We will send all of the earnings from this performance of free, devised, instructional, ladyfied or queered large-group improvisation to two local charities who are well-placed to act QUICKLY to support Ukrainians and Ukraine.
Kyiv Pride. A Ukrainian NGO that helps internally displaced LGBTQI people (and their families) in Ukraine, and advocates strongly for their rights – In Russia these rights have been destroyed, as they are in any territory gained by Russia. (See, for example, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/05/war-brings-urgency-to-fight-for-lgbt-rights-in-ukraine )
Spolu Ukraine Trucks for Kherson, who, in cooperation with the WHO, are urgently sending trucks with food, hygiene aids and other help to communities whose homes, infrastructure, and land have been flooded by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
https://www.donio.sk/kamion-pre-cherson
Other useful links:
- Lists of organisations supporting Ukrainian refugees and civil society
- A group of doctors working as Medics 4 Ukraine, trying to help colleagues in Ukraine with urgently needed medical supplies to help them treat patients who are injured and sick.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/UK-doctors-supplying-Ukraine-with-medical-kit
- Support for independent journalism in situ by the Kyiv Independent team:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/kyivindependent-launch
