The Center For Deep Listening

INNER COMPASS, by Susan Geaney

Iinspired by the works and philosophy of Pauline Oliveros. I like to create pieces that are accessible for all to explore and contribute in their own way. These pieces can be imagined and experienced privately or performed in any context and location. 

I’m a Composer and Improviser from Co. Kerry, Ireland. I’m interested in creating music that is deeply connected. My music asks performers to immerse themselves in a philosophy that facilitates a deeper listening and awareness to each other, the material, energy and space. Intuitive listening and responding remains the primary focus of my sound exploration across various creative disciplines. https://fortevilfruit.bandcamp.com/album/tempf

CONSENSUS, by CAROLINE MALLONEE

(“Consensus is fucking hard” – Michael Friedman)

American composer Caroline Mallonee finds inspiration in visual art, science, languages, and musical puzzles. She holds degrees from Harvard, Yale and Duke, and held a Fulbright Fellowship to the Netherlands, where she studied with Louis Andriessen. She is a professional singer in the Vocalis Chamber Choir and is the director of the Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat, a week-long festival for composers and improvisers held in New Hampshire each June.

SONG TO BE SUNG IN THE CITY, by Daniel Puig

The inspiration for this “song to be sung in the city” is a photo from a graffiti in a street in Rio de Janeiro, where silence is a rare commodity entangled with social opportunities: “Escuto o silêncio”, “I hear the silence”. The image-song-textscore organism tries to build an atmosphere where performers can bring about their experience of the city in all its contrasts and possibilities around sound, and silence.

Daniel Puig (1970) is a Brazilian composer that currently lives and teaches in Porto Seguro, Bahia. His works interface different media with vocal, instrumental and electronic means, in organic complex performances that explore multimodality in unexpected ways. Well recognized in his country, after a prize at Darmstadt in 2010, he has had performances in Europe and the United States.

LISTENING PIECE (VI), by RICHARD P JOHN

Richard P John is a pianist and composer from South Wales, UK. A graduate of the Royal College of Music, London (2000-2004), his interests include experimental and ambient music. Richard’s compositional output consists of solo, vocal, ensemble and choral music, as well as the soundtrack to several independent films.

INSTRUCTION FOR NON-HUMAN LISTENING NO. 12, by Louise Mackenzie

BE THE SEA is a project commissioned by Sea AIR, part of SeaScapes Co/Lab the creative engagement project for SeaScapes: Tyne to Tees Shores to Seas that asks: how we can become more capable of living with and not just on the coast – in ways that are mutually sustainable with fellow human and non-human beings? BE THE SEA is a collaboration between artist Louise Mackenzie, composer Hayley Jenkins, Durham Wildlife Trust and a growing community of BE THE SEA participants. Scores developed are co-created by the participants of the BE THE SEA project. 

Louise Mackenzie is a sound and visual artist, and a post-doctoral researcher at Newcastle University researching relationships of care in human/non-human communities. She has developed artworks for national and international audiences including ZKM, Fort Process, Photo España, BALTIC and Lumiere Durham. Together with composer Hayley Jenkins, Durham Wildlife Trust and Seascapes Co/Lab, University of Sunderland, Louise founded BE THE SEA, a collaborative project that foregrounds listening strategies to ask how we can live with the coast in ways that are mutually sustainable. .

TEMPORAL COMPASS, by Alex Mah

temporal compass imagines that the interpreter is situated on a compass rose, with directions in space relating to directions in time. The score could be used to instigate a physical (and/or musical) improvisation where one explores the concepts of time in space. The questions, a nod to Pauline Oliveros, can be a starting point of inquiry.

Alex Mah is a composer and interdisciplinary artist whose scores use verbal notation to deal with ideas of open forms, performer choices, and the sensing body. He holds a BFA Music from Simon Fraser University (CAN) and an MRes from Bath Spa University (U.K.) under James Saunders, and has studied privately with Antoine Beuger (Wandelweiser). He has performed across Canada, Germany, Denmark, and the U.K.

THE DISPATCH, by Candice Hopkins / Raven Chacon

Candice Hopkins (Tlingit) is a Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Red Hook, New York. Her writing and curatorial practice explores the intersection of history, contemporary art, and indigeneity. She worked as senior curator for the 2019 and 2022 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and was part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media art collective Isuma. She is co-curator of notable exhibitions including Art for New Understanding; Native Voices 1950s to Now; the 2017 SITE Site Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada; documenta 14 in Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada; and Close Encounters: The Next 500 years in Winnipeg, MB.

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, REDCAT, Vancouver Art Gallery, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, and The Kennedy Center. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009-2018, he co-created artworks presented at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International 57, as well as the 2-mile long land art installation Repellent Fence.

ANYTHING AND NOTHING, by Jack Herscowitz

Jack Herscowitz is a Los Angeles based composer who engages deep inter- personal collaborations, trans-disciplinary thinking, and alternate definitions of “score” to recognize music as a process which has always extended beyond the singular dimension of sound. His work runs the wide gamut of interactive sound installations, noisy electronic improvisations, theatrical chamber music, and communal spaces for sound making. Jack is pursuing an M.F.A. in Composition and Experimental Sound Practices at CalArts and holds a B.A. in Music and Environmental Studies from Middlebury College.

ESCAPE FROM POSSIBILITY, by astrid hubbard flynn

“Perhaps the most egregious thing we are taught is that we should just be really good at what’s already [considered] possible, to leave the impossible alone.”

– adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

“Beings are numberless. I vow to save them [all]. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha’s way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it.”

– The Four Vows (San Francisco Zen Center translation)

astrid hubbard flynn (b. 1999, they/them) is a composer, flutist, vocalist and scholar. Their mediums include staff notation, fixed and live electronic setups, and improvisation based in text and graphics. Throughout their work, astrid is interested in facilitating collaborative scenarios and imagining alternative frameworks for music-making. astrid is currently pursuing a B.A. in Music at Brown University, where they have studied composition with Wang Lu, Kristina Warren and Eric Nathan. astrid grew up on Dakota land and currently lives on Narragansett land. .

REGRETS AND RESENTMENTS, by James Ilgenfritz

Composer/bassist James Ilgenfritz is recognized in The New Yorker for his “characteristic magnanimity” and his “invaluable contributions to New York’s new-music community.” In 2021 he released “Aging” with Lucie Vítková, and “Loss And Gain” with Brian Chase and Robbie Lee. James has performed around the US, Europe, and in Asia; has had residencies at John Zorn’s The Stone in 2015 and 2018; and was Artist-In-Residence at ISSUE Project Room in 2011. He is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at University of California Irvine.

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