BORB UP! An Introduction to Environmental Improvisation

Price and Sign Ups- To Be Announced

Class Description

This 4 class series is about using the environmental soundscape as a jumping off point to hard-hitting creative music. Featuring heavy doses of participant playing interwoven with theory, this class utilizes forms of improvisation, where spontaneity and translated memory creates a rich tapestry of sounds. Students will use their instruments to sound arhythmically, employ gesture based mimicry, and create sound effects inside of rich harmonies.. Listening is explored both as an activity that is used in the present with the people in the room, but also as a way of structuring music through memory (a certain place or feeling). There is no need for anyone to be able to match pitch or keep time, as those concepts are useful, but fundamentally secondary for this music. The workshop scales up conceptually from first-time musicians to those with extreme instrumental proficiency.

BIO

Aaron  Pond is a musician, concert promoter, and  community organizer active in  Philadelphia. His improvisational  practice is drawn from early  atonal music, the playful spirituality of  the AACM, and a South Florida childhood spent in synagogues and swamps.  His scholarly pursuits center the universal aesthetic structures of  spirit possession and the marking  power of ritual. Utilizing French horn, homemade flutes, extended vocal technique, and breath controlled synthesizers, Aaron’s performance is a volatile channeling where anything might happen.

Aaron has several active bands-- BORBS, Inverse and Obverse, Argyle Torah,  Toro Bravo, and Boldt Fog. His curatorial work has been featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Broad Street Review. He is a graduate of the embattled New College of Florida and given lectures on music at the University of Pennsylvania, Curtis Institute of Music, and Temple University. As a performer/thinker he has closely collaborated with Pew Fellows- Karen Smith, Toshi Makihara, and Dan Blacksberg.  He is the President of the People's Music Supply, and damn proud of it.