Lê Quan Ninh (Workshop)

Lê Quan Ninh presents an improvisation and active listening workshop targeted at musicians but open to all interested.

Need:Necessity

“Everywhere and anywhere, no matter where or when—driving along a road, at the crossroads of two busy city streets, at a small train station in the country—no matter that no music is formally happening, I am listening. Not out of a sense of obligation and with no effort. I am merely enjoying the sense of sound, the basic activity of sound, an activity that gives us clues about distances, direction, things that can’t be seen, lengths of time, powers all around, a vast array of frequencies. This neutral vibratory activity: it’s coming from all directions (right or left, above or below, and every degree of degree in between); it’s crowded with the vibrations of  fleeting and lasting events but all the time in a state of vanishing; it’s a sonic envelopment riddled with unanticipated in inflections themselves incessantly modulating. This background vibratory activity can appease what hearing once claimed as rightfully its own. To hear. To hear without being tempted to identify and name what is heard. The hearing function is thereby completely fulfilled. The ear feels totally satisfied sensing all these sonic phenomena at once—in and from the volume of space they occupy—and the emptiness of which they’re made. The ear relaxes. It abandons any tension of listening, toward listening, and all desire for concentration on listening. As a result of this in-flow, the desire for music proper is abandoned; no music is needed. The prevailing prejudice of the value of music over mere sound, the same prejudice by which I first found my raison d’être, dissipates. Finally, a huge weight is lifted. Listening has liberated me from listening, and hence freed me from the demands of music, the need for music, the necessity of music. In this release I can freely play music.”

This workshop is free but participants should register in advance by sending an e-mail to workshops@outra.pt.

Sessions: 10h30 to 13h00 (1st Group) e 16h to 18h30 (2nd Group).