Ladies and gents, this week we are in for a real brain treat at BURNSIDE INSIDE. The Providence Research Ensemble, a creation of RISD fellowship recipient J. P. A. Falzone, is a project that has a thoughtful approach to the form of music, shifting between a focus on musical systems and sounds.
The Providence Research Ensemble Plays at Aurora
The Providence Research Ensemble is a group Falzone founded to promote new music by contemporary composers, including his own work and pieces by fellow ensemble members.
Falzone grew up in a family that encouraged music. His father was a semi-professional and his grandparents enjoyed playing tunes at family gatherings. As a child, James wanted to be a composer.
“I always had two fantasies. I wanted to be either a composer or a mad scientist that lived in an abandoned factory. . . my 8 year old self would be very edified, now that I’m somewhere in the middle.”
Excerpts from Falzone’s notebook
After studying history and french, J. P. A. Falzone re-engaged with music by playing in a couple of bands, and scribbling down musical structures and systems in his notebooks. He began to wonder how they’d play.
“Adopting the mantel of ‘composer’ is something that you can’t do uncritically; a lot of that tradition is justifiably obnoxious. Even the term ‘poet’ isn’t quite as nauseating. Being humble and accommodating in what you set out to do is important in presenting music for any audience! It’s a lot of work, but the Providence Research Ensemble is very egalitarian. There is no conductor; we try to play in informal settings, even though the music itself has solid formal underpinnings.”
The Ensemble’s musical preoccupations exist in the overlap between visual movements such as minimalism, and the New York School of composers including Mort Feldman, Chris Hobbs, and John Cage. Also of interest is Pierre Schaeffer’s compositional practice, Musique Concrète where music is made from sound without an apparent originating cause. Theoretically, music made in this idiom is not restricted to the western musical rules of melody, harmony, rhythm and meter.
“It’s a strange way of making music. It’s fun and challenging, but to present this music in an informal and friendly manner is important to me, and I am unutterably grateful to have such fine fellow musicians who share a similar vision. Our performances can, admittedly, though I must stress unintentionally, give the impression of some sort of highbrow intellectualism, but we really want people to have a fun and lively experience of the music, even if it is meditative and/or internally complex.”
detail(L) and installation(R) from Sol LeWitt’s Scribbles, a study in minimal structures contributing to illusionistic form, 2007
“I don’t really like the term experimental because to me, it’s not always the best way to describe certain types of music. You’re not attempting to describe sound through a set hypotheses and tests, or at least I don’t think of my music as an experiment. Now, the group itself is kind of an experiment, which so far is going well!”
We are super excited to be hosting this amazing project for our last BURNSIDE INSIDE of the month. Doors open a 4:30, music starts at 5:30, and ends at 7:00pm.
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