Saturday, June 9th 2018 5 pm Free Entry
St Peter's Arts Centre, Preston PR1 7BX

Murmurists will premiere Anthony Donovan's 'Poor vs Poor'; a one-hour continuous piece involving everything from spoken word, contemporary dance, Free Jazz and Black Metal, to comedy, film and theatrics - as much akin to the spite of Spitting Image as to that of Pinter, Laing and Artaud, as much about the aesthetics of protest as about the ideas of Xenakis, Cage and Brecht.

All being well, this will happen .... Art now, for Murmurists, has to be lethally expressive of, and get down into, narrative - and, moreover, this narrative: the survival narrative. It has to soil itself to bits in and for the struggle. It has to attempt to join the solution, by climbing off its sticky white walls, away from mainstream value and its exotic esoterica and its language of willful obfuscation, money-maths and nihilism. It has to get transmitted. Adorno was right; dead right. But he's dead anyway. Stone dead. Pig ignorant dead. Porno Adorno dead. Pushing up the daisies dead. Art after Adorno dead. There's nothing he can do about it; not at fiery Fahrenheit 452. Richard Dawkins is dead, too; Dawkins dead; Dawkins death-ray dead, with a split-lip and black eyes, and headphones over cauliflower-ears, with GITMO Death Metal spewing out, over and over, every day another barricade. Art has to be relentless in ways it doesn't like. It has to be its own hostage to fortune.

Come join the 100. 

Support will come from a series of small group improv sets by members of Murmurists.  

Full 100-strong line-up will be revealed end of March 2018

Friday June 8th, The Continental, Preston, Doors 7.30, £3.00

System 5050 and the ensemble sound mass (as known as the density index) is there a Density index of one? if yes does it matter, is it of any use?

This book by R. Murray Schafer is filled with listening and sound making exercises that allow the student to begin thinking more deeply about sounds and their environment. This book will help the participants "clean" their ear and explore questions like the difference between "focused and peripheral listening". Schafer, R. Murray. A Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Sound Making. Arcana Editions. 1992. PDF accessible at https://monoskop.org/images/7/7b/Schafer_R_Murray_A_Sound_Education_100_Exercises_in_Listening_and_Soundmaking.pdf.

Highly recommended.
Includes the now commonplace, but at the time new concept, draw and spell that sound

From 1983 Stevens was involved with Community Music, an organisation through which he took his form of music making to youth clubs, mental health institutions and other unusual places. Notes taken during these sessions were later turned into a book for the Open University called Search and Reflect (1985)

Title: Search and reflect
Author: John Stevens
Publisher:  Rockschool LTD
ISBN: 9781902775692
Pages: 116
Language: English

Buy searcha and reflect at Musicroom website : URL LINK

An essential resource for anyone involved in the delivery of workshops that explore the nature and practice of free improvisation in music.

The following review is lifted from 
https://shop.sendmemusic.com/products/john-stevens-search-and-reflect-a-music-workshop-handbook

This music workshop manual documents the pieces used by the London-based organisation Community Music in its workshops. The value in these pieces lies in their practical application and they are an excellent tool for every music workshop leader, for every music teacher, and for individual musicians with an interest in improvisation. The pieces are designed to encourage more people to participate in group music-making and therefore cater as much for the musically inexperienced as for the proficient musican. Each piece includes detailed guidance, but only a few include musical notation. They may be played or sung.

An introduction – Preliminaries – offers invaluable advice on how to run an effective improvisation workshop. The manual is then divided into two sections – Rhythm and Improvisation. In the Rhythm Section, the twelve pieces aim to help develop rhythmic skills - maintaining regular tempo, independence, and overall rhythmic awareness. The author demonstrates the essence of timekeeping with the basic unit of ONE TWO. This is presented with clear guidelines for its practice and development, stage by stage. Later, the Rhythm Tree chapter teaches how to play 3 over 4, 5 over 4, and 7 over 4, with many practical ideas and exercises for workshop use. Oddseven explores the harmonic possibilities of a scale within a rhythmic framework.

The Improvisation Section deals with specific processes and skills which help to prepare the way for a sensitive, concentrated approach to create group interaction and individual spontaneity. Beginning with three preparatory exercises to encourage each individual to maintain a balance between being a receptive ear and having creative freedom, this section continues with Click Piece (focussing on short sounds, independence and connectiveness), Sustain (focussing on long sounds and breathing) and a further 14 pieces which develop listening and playing skills within a group environment.

Search and Reflect was first published in 1985 by Community Music, with a foreword by Christopher Small. This edition is re-published by Rockschool in 2007, with additional forewords by Steve Beresford and Maggie Nicols.

Book, spiral-bound, 112 pages

The 2018 Grand Gathering will take place from Monday 3rd September until Sunday 9th September.

This YouTube account is linked to the Improvisers' networks Wales project.

This Flickr account is linked to the Improvisers' networks Wales project. It contains a mixture of image categories which may include: portraits of artists and improvisers based in Wales, archive images from events, marketing images to support the project, boring admin images used by the website. To be continued an updated.

URL LINK - Improvisers Networks Wales, Flickr Account

Registered members of the website can use this as a resource. Contact the office for more information.

Improvisers' Networks Wales Funders & Finance

[Modern Ritual]