Improvisation as a creative dialogue

Our paper will describe the creative process of Zaum: Beyond Mind an interactive sound theater performance, and examine the role of improvisation in shaping the piece. Zaum is a modular performance for voice, bandoneon, piano and electronics- integrating both live interactive elements and fixed sounds – with lighting, and video projection. While the creative process included traditional modes of composition, a significant aspect in melding the contribution of two composers - each with a different approach to composition - shares important attributes with improvisation. It is to do with creative listening, adjusting our individual contribution in response to changing contexts, and developing a shared sense of musical pacing and narrative. Improvisation also played a significant role in developing the technological, interactive elements of the piece with a co-evolution of the programming and the performance over a lengthy process of exploration and adjustments. This process, therefore, entails multiple dialogues, musical as well as verbal, between us as a duo and between us and our instruments. On the way we discovered that analytical reflection, despite its connotations of cerebral processes popularly portrayed as in opposition to the spontaneity required in improvisation, played a crucial role in the shaping of the piece

MISAME

Recording of Peter Beyls's Rothko. "The most important tool that the artist shapes through his constant practice is the belief in the ability to produce miracles when they are needed.” – Mark Rothko, “Possibilities” 1947 The 3 parts that constitute the work have a different macro-structure. They have a fundamental common interest in the color of sound. The work evolves from an extra-musical point of view: my interest for painters of colorful American plans, in particular Newman and Rothko. Both emancipate and materialize the color factor as the essential object of their work. In the work of Rothko, the hand that paints can always be felt through an acute logic of austerity, in the long run. The evolution of character of Rothko's work: his early works are based on a concrete starting point and his "transcendental rectangles" make up the central period of this work, the remarkable crystallization between content and form gives his work a preponderant place in post-war abstract painting. The electronic work "Rothko" confronts us with the form and certainly not the content of the work of Mark Rothko. I want to emphasize, however, that I did not pursue the idea of translating the image into sound. The relationship between the sound work "Rothko" and the paintings is at a rather subjective, mental, and interpretive level