Lab Days #12
Henrik Frisk and Stefan Östersjö have both been very dedicated to integral work developing the field of artistic research in music in Sweden and beyond. Henrik is an accomplished improviser and jazz musician, as well as an electroacoustic composer and sound installation artist with a deeply developed, innovative practice in human-machine interaction. Thus, he has another angle on the order and chaos of improvisation. Stefan is a virtuostic guitarist who has played a great number of new works for guitar, many of them compositions written for him, which employ improvisation in the plethora of ways contemporary composers do. He has also worked extensively with musicians coming from Vietnamese folk music and its experimental offshoots. Both Stefan and Henrik are dedicated improvisors, and each of them has a deep practice in research and scholarly writing. Stefan has written extensively about “tacit” or “embodied” knowledge in artistic research, which is something we have discussed more and more in recent meetings. Henrik’s research has taken him to some of the same territories in the theoretical and philosophical worlds Klas is drawing upon, which was valuable for us as a group to hear such a discussion of.
09/19/18 “5b Harmonizer, Decelerator, add Twister and Distributor”
09/20/18 “4b Swirler”
“It was wonderful to have Stefan and Henrik join us in our process. One of the most striking things about their music presence in the group was how very easily they came into what we have been doing. I had wondered if, having had so many days of extremely concentrated time together as a unit, our music was still something that contained the space, openness and ability to welcome new players in that is so important for so much improvised music. It was also fascinating to hear their different perspectives on scores and improvisation, since each of them has such a unique range of experiences with these methods of organizing music. Stefan’s relation to the score as a score (since he had worked so much with scores) was a fascinating addition to the group, since amongst us only Anna has a similar sort of experience with scored music. That was a fruitful conversation throughout the lab days, to delve a little more into how the score is not a score, or is something tangentially related to one. It was also illuminating to hear Henrik and Klas discuss some of the philosophical and theoretical materials that inform Klas’ approach to the project. It was important for all of us to hear them converse, I think, since they had apparently both been very engaged in reading some of the same materials. But really, the most important thing that I took away was this: hearing how Henrik and Stefan were each utterly, individually themselves and yet seamlessly came into the music at hand was really a confirmation of our work for me as something that could be communicated and carried forth from the concentrated time we have had together.”
-Katt Hernandez
