2010 Summer Courses, Santa Rosa, CA

Course Descriptions |  Location  |  Accomodation  |  Contact  | Registration

These courses may be taken individually as one-week courses or as a full three-week course. This is the third year of summer courses in Santa Rosa, and both continuing and new participants are welcome.

Instrument Building: Sound Research and Instrument Building
7/26/10 – 7/30/10  $650

In this course, each participant will build their own instrument, as well as work collectively on instruments that will be used in further music courses.
Participants continuing from pervious courses may forge bronze gongs tuned to their choice of tones. New students will be encouraged to work with iron to make a glockenspiel, chimes or gongs. Those with interest may also build stringed instruments similar to a psaltery.

You will be asked what instrument you wish to build when your registration is received. Materials are included in the course fee, but those wishing to build additional instruments may need to purchase extra materials.

This course will include:
- Each participant will build their own instrument
- Participants will work collectively on shared instruments
- Listening study of the materials and forms of the instruments
- Musical exercises to develop new ways of playing the instruments
- Musical contributions from Bleffert on his instruments
- Exhibit of visual art expressing the being of music
- Graphic work as a means of sound research

Music: Work with New Instruments and Voice
8/2/10 – 8/6/10  $550

This course will focus on improvisation and composition with new instruments. It will include improvisation and composition exercises, work with graphic notation, listening exercises, and the study of tonal systems and contemporary music. The course will close with an informal concert on Friday evening at 6:00.

This course will include:
- Developing new elements of musical listening and playing
- Composition and free, open form
- Instrumental and vocal study of:
            melody and tonality in the human being;
            the being of musical movement;
            harmony, consonance and dissonance;
            silence, the hearable and un-hearable;
            the archetype of the musical in the human being;
            the cultural epochs of music;
            the impulse of America in new music;
            the development of new musical concepts.

Art: Visual Art and its Development through Musical Processes 
8/9/10 – 8/13/10  $550

This course will explore the arts in connection with one another. There will be a focus on visual art in connection with music. Participants will explore how to approach the theme in different mediums by alternating between individual and social artistic work. All types of artists are welcome. The course will close with an informal exhibition on Friday afternoon.

A Background Imagination of the Theme:
Creative movement lives in matter, form, gesture, color and space. Out of a resting presence, this creative movement develops itself through matter, space, form and color. The artist acts to close the circle of this movement, and aligns the world in a great union.