This was my first time hearing Kurt Schwitters and Jaap Blonk, both providing quite stimulating vocal works that instantaneously come off as free and playful, this so far is my favourite aspect to vocal improvisation. Whilst I appreciated Cathy Berberian, I didn’t particularly like the structure to the performance, it felt quite conceptual and academic in it’s execution and not as free as the other works, dealing mainly with onomatopoeia but I felt it was a little cold and disparate.
A member of the class contributed this fascinating video of Francis Bebey playing the bamboo flute which I hadn’t seen having been a fan of his music for some years, I hadn’t realised the subtle complexities of his use of the instrument and was quite amazed by this performance.
Schwitters’ Ursonate was an early demonstration of Sound Poetry. In the assessment feedback from my last project, the french literary movement ‘OuLiPo’ was brought to my attention by Ed as a demonstration of creativity through self imposed limitations . This seems to come from a completely different angle of dissecting poetry, the latter being one of dissecting prose and Song Poetry being more concerned with dissecting speech. I discovered I mix online whilst researching Song Poetry which has been really enlightening on the field and I am really drawn to this piece by Brenda Hutchinson.
I have never attempted Improvisation in such a free way, and spoke briefly with Gareth about Fred Frith of whom I am a big fan.