Listening experiment(s)
The Listening Experiment is a music concert form that immerses audience members and musicians in creative and varied modes of listening. For anyone who struggles to maintain focus when listening to beautiful music, this performance offers an opportunity to leave your seat and experience listening outside the box.
Rather than taking place in a traditional theater, these concerts takes place in open spaces of various sizes. The space is divided into four quadrants, each representing a different mode of listening: deep, embodied, visual, and free. Each mode is accompanied by a written definition and prompts, which give the audience tools to try out different ways of listening. Audience members are invited to align their breath with the music, listen with different parts of their bodies, reflect what they hear onto paper, or simply listen however they’d like to. Halfway through the performance, the boundaries between the four quadrants are removed and people are invited to use any listening mode anywhere in the space, thus allowing for a unique inter-audience performative mode to emerge.
Posters that guide the listening:
Massive Listening Experiment
Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY)
April 21, 2017
Featuring Shattered Glass condcutorless string orchestra
Produced in partnership with Choreographies for Survival and Groupmuse
Video by Gabe Rubin
Photos by Allyson Lupovich
Minor Listening Experiment
May 24, 2017
Private Residence (Brooklyn, NY)
Featuring classica music guitarist Phil Goldenberg
Produced in partnership with Groupmuse
Photos by Ino Badanjak
The home-concert version of Listening Experiment, in which the space is divided into four quadrants, each associated with a specific listening mode. People are seen moving, drawing, and experimenting with different ways to listen.
Riverside Listening Experiment
Riverside Church (New York, NY)
September 28, 2018
Featuring Shattered Glass string orchestra
Produced in partnership with Choreographies for Survival and Groupmuse
Photos by Erin Pearlman
Riverside Listening Experiment was made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
