{"id":9166,"date":"2018-10-16T14:33:51","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T12:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/blog\/linkage-contagion-mutation-cloud\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T14:33:51","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T12:33:51","slug":"linkage-contagion-mutation-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/blog\/linkage-contagion-mutation-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Linkage!: contagion, mutation, cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Justin Hoke<\/strong>\u00a0has written\u00a0contagion, mutation, cloud<\/em>\u00a0(2018), the new piece for our fourth\u00a0Linkage!<\/em><\/a>\u00a0phase. On\u00a0October 27 in WDR Funkhaus am Wallrafplatz<\/a>, students of Gemeinschaftsgrundschule Zwirnerstra\u00dfe will give its first premiere with our musicians from Ensemble Musikfabrik.<\/p>\n

You have been commissioned to write a piece for the new\u00a0project\u00a0Linkage!<\/em>. What is the main difference of this commission compared to others?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In many ways, this project was not a great departure from the concepts I wrestle\u00a0with in all my work. Nuance, minute variations. How a thing evolves\u2014quietly,\u00a0without our noticing\u2014until it becomes something else. The impossibility of\u00a0communication and connection. Moments of density, moments of scarcity. Of\u00a0course the main challenge was finding a way to distill these ideas into a simple\u00a0form, accessible to professionals and non-professionals alike, but the basic ideas\u00a0remain the same.<\/p>\n

The only requirement was, the composition has to be\u00a0\u201espielBar\u201c (playable), so it can be performed by pupils without prior\u00a0instrumental knowledge. How is your piece \u201espielBar\u201c?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I admit to being obsessed with detail. Indeed I often feel a composition has not\u00a0been fully interpreted until the details are all accounted for. That said,
\nrelinquishing control over that kind of granularity, as is necessary for a project\u00a0such as this, is an opportunity to find that same level of richness in other areas.\u00a0In contagion, mutation, cloud, sounds\u2014chosen by the participants\u2014are\u00a0generated by a leader (or leaders), and these sounds are imitated in succession\u00a0by the entire group, so that the gestures are passed around the room.\u00a0Participants are asked to focus on their neighbors and mimic them as closely as\u00a0possible. The decisions a single individual makes can affect the outcome\u00a0immensely. In this way, the piece is ultimately an exercise in careful listening: an\u00a0act in which anyone can participate.<\/p>\n

Please tell us something about the creative process: How did\u00a0you approach the piece? What was especially challenging?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Notation\u2014how a sound is rendered visually, what affect the notation has on a\u00a0performer\u2014is generally the first place I start when composing, and this project\u00a0was no different. I wanted the participants to engage with a visual object, just as\u00a0trained musicians would. How, then, to create a notation that has a very limited\u00a0number of elements and is easily graspable, that is not strict in how it must be\u00a0interpreted, but that also has the same richness of interpretation as other notated\u00a0music does?\u00a0Often, in order to understand the shape of a composition, I being with a \u201cmap\u201d: a\u00a0visual distillation of the architecture of the piece, but lacking many important\u00a0details. Normally the finished composition would be built up from this map.\u00a0However, the cyclical map in contagion, mutation, cloud is a complete visual\u00a0object, even though the interpreter has considerable freedom in how she decides\u00a0to \u201cread\u201d it. The participants can engage with this map in a variety of ways\u00a0depending on their experience: a notation both precise and open-ended.<\/p>\n

contagion, mutation, cloud<\/em>\u00a0is the title of your piece that students\u00a0of Bertolt-Brecht-Gesamtschule will premiere on October 27 at our\u00a0concert \u201eMusikfabrik im WDR 68 – Dark Paradise\u201c. What does the title tell\u00a0us about the composition?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am primarily a visual person. More than sound, I tend to think in images above\u00a0all else. The title\u2014those three mellifluous words\u2014are visualizations of the\u00a0experience of the piece. Sounds flow through the group like a virus through a\u00a0body; as they do, they inevitably evolve, shift, mutate; clouds at times thick and heavy and black, other times thin enough to blow away, all but invisible.<\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Hoke, the composer of the new piece “contagion, mutation, cloud” (2018) for our Linkage! project, gives insight into his creative process behind his work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9163,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-9166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview-en","tag-academy-musikfabrik"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musikfabrik.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}