CAPÍTULO VIII NITRATO DE AMONIO
INFRACCIONES, SANCIONES Y MEDIDAS CORRECTIVAS
4.1.1 Relentless in Springfield Park
In the summer of 2013, I recorded an improvisation with Sébastien Branche, a Leipzig- based French saxophone player, in Springfield park’s bandstand. This improvisation included several long moments of silence. When listening back to the recording, I can hear the sound from a machine155 during our silences — probably located in the park — that we had not noticed when we were playing. Even though we did not expect this sound to be recorded, it nevertheless fitted well to our perception with the rest of the sounds that had been recorded156. Sébastien Branche’s response to the recording is that he remembers the sounds of the planes passing approximately every five minutes. He also mentions that for him, paying attention to ‘the external sounds’ is important for the development of his own approach to playing the saxophone. He asks: ‘what am I listening to? How to
155 It is very common in Springfield Park for staff members to use different sorts of machines (to cut the
grass, to water plants, to remove the leaves) to maintain the park. To think of this park as a quiet place in terms of sounds would be far from reality. Planes fly over every two-three minutes and trains pass by regularly, often activating their horns. Somedays hundreds of children gather in the main field to play games and they make loud sounds when encouraging each other. Birds such as crows, parakeets, woodpeckers, swallows, or song thrush also contribute to the lively sonic atmosphere of this place.
156 In document 7 we can hear impacts probably produced by the park workers (44”) as well sustained low
frequencies created by an engine (1’ 08”). This second example reminds me of the experience of Zina’s Circle as when the sound of the saxophone ceases (1’07”), sounds from the environment emerge. Similarly, in Zina’s Circle I could hear environmental sounds emerging when participants would cease to emit sounds. This faculty to perceive environmental sounds rather than simply depend on silence, seems more likely to result from the passage from sound to silence.
underline it for myself thanks to the saxophone? How to create opportunities for playing thanks to these external sounds? What do I decide to imitate, to contrast, to use as a counterpoint, to ignore, to consider as a trigger, to hide, to unveil, to underline etc…?’ (email 9/12/16).
4.1.2 The Workshop Series
In September 2013 I was invited to play with Eddie Prévost, Ross Lambert, Hutch Demouilpied, Tony Hardie-Bick, Tom Wheatley, Tom Mill, Sue Lynch, and Grundik Kasyansky as part of the Workshop Series concerts at the Cafe Oto project space. This event aimed to present work made by musicians participating in the Improvised Music workshops organised by Prévost on Friday evenings at the Welsh Chapel to the public. The Cafe Oto project space is a small building located a few meters from the main music venue.
During the concert, there was at some point, a very long silence that reminded me of the listening experience I had in Istanbul. For a few minutes, nobody played. First, I felt tense not knowing if I should continue playing, or if it indicated the end of the piece. However, after a few seconds I did not worry anymore and started listening to environmental sounds. For instance, I particularly remember the cracklings of the wooden structure of the building that I had never noticed before.
Unlike the experience in Istanbul, after a few minutes of silence (similarly to the AMM recordings from the Royal College of Art), one musician resumed playing and we all followed him157. According to one of the participants, this part of the improvisation resembled the work of AMM158. I noticed that during this second part I was not able to
157 Within the context of the workshop, one of the suggestions made by Prévost consists of playing with the
other musician.
158 I don’t exactly know to what aspect from the AMM music this musician was referring to. During this
second part I was using a long cardboard cylinder that I adjusted to the saxophone to make very low sustained sounds. Maybe the musician was thinking of the AMM ‘laminal’ approach consisting of ‘layered textures’ (Prévost in Smith and Dean 1997, 69).
perceive environmental sounds any more. This could be due to several reasons such as the fact that I was mostly paying attention to the sounds I was making, the fact that I was also rather focusing on sounds that were made by other musicians, and maybe also the fact that the sounds made by musical instruments were much louder than the environmental sounds.
4.1.3 Bandstand Meditation
I organised a public event on the 28th of September 2014 involving Improvised Music and ‘deep listening’ practice. Deep listening is a practice created by composer Pauline Oliveros, which is concerned with ‘listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear’ including ‘the sounds of daily life, of nature, or one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds’ (Oliveros 2010,73). This event included Angharad Davies159, a violinist interested in experimental and Improvised Music, and Ximena Alarcón, a researcher and artist interested in deep listening practice.
For this event I asked Ximena Alarcón to introduce deep listening in the Springfield Park bandstand. Having done some research about bandstands, I wanted to foreground the relationship between this kind of architecture and the practice of meditation. According to Marie-Claire Mussat, bandstand designs160 were inspired by Chinese pavilions dedicated to meditation and in a similar way, deep listening is closely related to Oliveros’ previous work, Sonic Meditations.
With this event I also wanted to find a path that might connect my interest in Improvised Music with the listening practice developed by Oliveros. One of my aims was to see if deep listening could bring certain practices into Improvised Music performance, such as
159 An excerpt of this performance can be found in document 8.
160 Mussat explains that originally bandstands were ‘nothing more than a garden pavilion, that of the Chinese
garden introduced in the eighteenth century in England in the landscaped gardens, and it owes its festive use to the “pleasure gardens”’ (Mussat 1992 and 2002, 325). The Springfield Park bandstand was built in 1905.
the bodily ‘warm ups’ that I find very useful for concentration and listening, but which are not very popular among musicians and never taken into consideration by audiences161.
4.1.4 Sarah Hughes AMM
In the winter of 2014, I participated in a recording of Sarah Hughes’ piece, ‘Architectural Model Making’, a musical project supported by Simon Reynell’s label Another Timbre, in Springfield Park. Sarah Hughes is an artist and experimental music performer and composer based in the UK and has been collaborating with composers from Wandelweiser such as Michael Pisaro.
During the work on Sarah Hughes’ piece I intended to record the sounds of the saxophone in Springfield Park combined with sounds I could hear around me such as the birds, the trains, or the planes regularly passing in that area. The way I decided to perform this piece162 consisted of moving progressively very close to the microphone, to being very far from it. In document 10 we can hear the saxophone near the microphone (34”), and in document 11, it is far from it (34”).
4.1.5 MKII Re-Birth
At a musical evening called Re-birth organised by curator and musician, Mark Wagner, on 20th of April 2014, I gave a solo performance at MKII, Clapton. During the concert I started by making a mezzo forte sound and then left it in silence. I did not know what to do and so I repeated the previous note, but a bit quieter. Then I stopped again and began
161 According to James Johnson, audience behaviour is very coded and far from being only defined by music
itself. For instance, he asserts that musical venues used to be noisy in Paris before the French Revolution. Silence was introduced by the new social class ruling the country (the bourgeois) as a concert etiquette that would distinguish them from the former class in power, the aristocrats (Johnson 1995).
162Even though this experience was extremely inspiring, I decided not to publish my recordings. On the
website of the musical label ‘Another Timbre’ can be found recordings of this work by other performers.
http://www.anothertimbre.com/sarahhughesamm.html [Accessed September 15, 2018].See score in appendix 8 (page 191).
to hear environmental sounds around me. I could hear water, the noise made by chairs, a child, and small repeated noises as if someone was hitting something, a pipe. I resumed playing a sustained sound but very quietly. I then came back to silence again. I could feel the audience listening, and I had the sensation that they were very attentive. I wondered if they would become tired of this situation. One person left the room. I could hear someone come in and say hi to a friend. I remained silent. I wondered if I was imposing this attention upon silence to the audience. Suddenly, I placed a speaker on a drum set next to me. The speaker created a continuous sound that vibrated on the drum. By doing this, the sound reference that I was aware of was not environmental anymore but rather the continuous sound produced by the drums. I let this device sound by itself for a while, and during the rest of the performance, I made a few noises slightly above the sound of the drums, and later a bit below the speaker level.