THE TERMS OF INFLUENCE / Workshop with Jean-Luc & Seijiro

Improvisation is above all related to a sort of freedom: that of the individual confronted by a place, other musicians and an audience. Improvisation requires an awareness of this environment and some specific strategies (danger, power, collaboration, independence…) as well as a resulting sociological commitment (communication, responsibility, understanding, apprehension, decision).

This workshop with Japanese percussionist and improviser Seijiro Murayama, and the French composer and improviser, Jean-Luc Guionnet, will explore the multiple relationships that take place between the music and its environment, the strategies that emerge among the musicians, the solids on which flux and time will divide themselves, the terms of that will catch influences.

The workshop is for all ages, there are 15 places.
***NOW FULLY BOOKED

The workshop will be 2.5 hours long with a break in the middle. It will take place in the event space at Civic House, a fully accessible venue.

No prior knowledge required, and no equipment is needed. Email us via music.space.programme@gmail.com with any questions.

THE TERMS OF INFLUENCE is presented in collaboration with Counterflows. As part of the Counterflows programme, Jean-Luc & Seijiro will perform the day before on the 5th September, 7.30pm at GLOSS (Glasgow Library of Synthesized Sound).

Venue information (Civic House)
Click here to view the access information for Civic House (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

Jean-Luc Guionnet studied philophy of art and visual arts at the Sorbonne (Paris 1). He then got commited to music and sound art through sound installations (“Reflected Waves” or “Stones, Air, Axioms : fèn te ko ro, nka kow bè ro kolo ntè”), electroacoustic compositions and tape music (“Non Organic Bias”, “Tournures Cessent”), music for stage performances (“Ce qui dure dans ce qui dure” with Lotus Edde Khouri) instrumental compositions (“Distances Ouïes Dites”) and musical improvisations (organ solos, sax solos, “Hubbub”, “Ames Room”). He also did several programs for the national french radio (France Culture – ACR) about sound and listening. These various work are published in many musical label all over the world (“Ground Fault”, “Potlatch”, “Empty Editions”, “Hibari”, …). Along with this sonic activity, through drawing he pursues his visual art practice, and he develops a theoretical work through a series of texts about metaphysics, sound and art that he uses to give lectures in french and english (Transmedial, Glasgow University, EHESS, etc.).

“My work divides itself into as many ways, as occasions arise for me to think and act with sound and drawings. These occasions have a strong connection with an outside element: an instrument (saxophone), a theoretical question (what is “rumour”?), and especially a collaborating friend (Franck Gourdien, Lotus Edde Khouri … Seijiro Murayama) … There then follows a collection of themes which, in turn, influences the evolution of the work and defines the direction of meetings to come: the thickness of the air, the pidgin, the musical instrument considered as affective automaton, listening dark unto itself, the algebra of and in hearing, sound as a signature of space, signature of objects, signature of what it is not… the fact that French uses the same word – le temps – for time and weather, propagation and spread of forms in time etc. The emotion I look for is made out of all these strata and the sliding of one over the other.” – Jean-Luc Guionnet

Seijiro Murayama was born in Nagasaki in 1957. Musician and improviser. Murayama also conducts workshops on improvisation. He performs using his voice, snare drum (or drum set). He began his career in 1982 alongside Keiji Haino. From 2000 to 2023, he worked intensively in France in the field of dance and theater. His current collaborators include Jean-Luc Guionnet, Axel Dörner, Chris Pitsiokos, Victor Guaitá, Attila Gyárfás, Carlo Sampaolesi, Silvan Schmid, Roger Fähndrich, and sound artist Eric La Casa.

He contributed to the text *Idioms and Idiots*: http://www.mattin.org/recordings/IDIOMS_AND_IDIOTS.html