Corey Fogel: submission materials for Sounding Paths 2018 residency
AUDIO:
|
solo drums. March 28, 2018. Battery Books, Pasadena
solo drums. October 31, 2016. MENGI, Reykjavik, Iceland.
SPUN-OFF MUSIC [Vos iz Abspaltung (musik)? danken!] 2012.
|
VIDEO:
3 part video, developed during a two-week residency in August 2014, in an abandoned housing development in Bahçecik, Turkey.
Materials: hollow terracotta clay brick, metal wire, rebar, roof tops, iPhone 4 camera.
COMPOSER STATEMENT
I typically describe my work as structured improvisation, drawing on traditions of aleatoric music, jazz, and often favoring chamber ensemble instrumentation. My approach to composition tries to engineer moments of listening within improvisational performance, and stitch them together into a sequence of intentional events. In each piece, I try to establish an environment inside of which musicians can express independence, either autonomously or collaboratively. Like balancing a double-pan scale, I strive to make my works equally instructive and interpretative. Composing is an ongoing challenge to relinquish control; to not interrupt players’ interpretation, while simultaneously trying to provoke dynamic group improvisation. I want to provide only enough direction to allow a cache of possible material to germinate into a collective creation. Built into this disposition is a willingness to let things collapse musically as well.
Most of my traditionally notated material locates the precipice of illegibility by omitting various parameters required for a successful reading. I use familiar elements to stimulate the trained musician to do what they know how on their instrument, while encouraging autonomous choices in, pitch, range, duration, timbre and dynamics. These values can be explored in a number of ways, and I am always looking for new strategies to denote playable options. Notated rhythm is often the most committed aspect on the page, giving musicians a fundamental subdivision of linear time, while emphasizing the flavor that their individual personalities add to the material. Autonomy itself is meant to be mediated, as these opportunities to activate my vacant notation depend on collaborative listening and making decisions accordingly. Discretion is crucial to making all of the available elements coalesce.
My graphic notational systems defy time by presenting musicians with transcriptions of imaginary musical events that have not yet occurred. Synesthetic associations between sound and visual architecture are represented with colors, shapes, and textures, often organized in a cellular fashion, and depicting various progressions. This work loosely follows a select tradition of indeterminate graphic notation, encouraging interpretation through deductive listening. I often tell musicians that what is more important is knowing what not to play, than what to play. This again requires collaborative listening to mediate choices as an ensemble in order to realize the best possible interpretation of the material. Subjectivity and agency remain intact for the interpreting ensemble member, while ideally a collective, judicious voice emerges with tension and resistance.
--
ARTIST STATEMENT:
My current practice evolved from integrating performance with my earliest creative impulses- adolescent experiments with androgyny, color, fashion, rebellion, and humor. Previously compartmentalized personal expression, craft, and music now co-exist to explore the sublime.
Synesthesia, sensuality, and spirituality have always led me to work instinctually with subjects that naturally attract me. I am inspired by abstract characters that exist between mediums. I create performances by transposing linear and minimalist musical structures into vibrant, multi-layered compositions of fabric, object, sound, gesture, and organic material. Many works are improvisational and site-specific. A familiar, inviting, perhaps tongue-in-cheek trope provides a platform for more abstract manipulations, often developing into a surreal myth or ritual. Using materiality, physicality, temporality and corporeality, I engage various media to accomplish newly discovered tasks. I try to intuit the most authentic role for each subject, often uncovering innately sexual, visceral relationships that mirror my behaviors as a percussionist. My recent goals are to stage and distill sculptural, video, and photographic pieces that preserve or pause rich ephemeral moments to continue collapsing boundaries between disciplines.
---
My current practice evolved from integrating performance with my earliest creative impulses- adolescent experiments with androgyny, color, fashion, rebellion, and humor. Previously compartmentalized personal expression, craft, and music now co-exist to explore the sublime.
Synesthesia, sensuality, and spirituality have always led me to work instinctually with subjects that naturally attract me. I am inspired by abstract characters that exist between mediums. I create performances by transposing linear and minimalist musical structures into vibrant, multi-layered compositions of fabric, object, sound, gesture, and organic material. Many works are improvisational and site-specific. A familiar, inviting, perhaps tongue-in-cheek trope provides a platform for more abstract manipulations, often developing into a surreal myth or ritual. Using materiality, physicality, temporality and corporeality, I engage various media to accomplish newly discovered tasks. I try to intuit the most authentic role for each subject, often uncovering innately sexual, visceral relationships that mirror my behaviors as a percussionist. My recent goals are to stage and distill sculptural, video, and photographic pieces that preserve or pause rich ephemeral moments to continue collapsing boundaries between disciplines.
---
SCORES:
