Samalan & Uniensory Sounds
Alan Tower and Kim Riccelli
The Samalan is both an instrument and an environment. It is an elemental force of nature unlike anything people have experienced before. Some will be invited inside the chamber for a fully immersive sonic experience. Along with it being fun it can alter one’s sense of self, time and silence.
A few will have the chance to play the Samalan at the end of the evening.
Also hear new music for the evocative Hang & Halo:
Invented in 2001 it has captured worldwide attention for the sheer beauty of its sound.
And the Huaca: Invented in 1980 it provides a way for a wind instrument to play exotic 3 tone chords in clay.
PLUS Special engagement for musicians to encounter and explore the Samalan at Tom Nunn’s workshop/venue the Nunnery in SF’s Mission District. Bow it, stroke it, lie inside it and give instrument inventor Allan Tower your feedback. This is a FREE and friendly social engagement for the Bay Area instrument inventing and extended technique community.
Sat April 2, 1-3 PM
The Nunnery
3016 25th st, SF
FREE
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Alan Tower:
After 12 albums and decades of composing and performing musical compositions I began to recognize an inherent gulf between performer and audience. To bridge this gap I decided to redesign and invent acoustic instruments that act as three dimensional immersive environments for connecting a player more directly to others. While there is a certain musicality involved, this approach relies more on sound as a physical presence than on the elements of melody, harmony or rhythm, which can send a person’s mind off into known musical territory. Instead the result is a gentle yet compelling disruption of normal mental activity, often altering one’s sense of self, time, and silence in the process. I want to better understand these effects for people, and to track psychological openings and other changes over time. The focus is unisensory rather than multisensory, calling for the blocking of a receiver’s visual stimuli, for example, to facilitate a potentially deeper experience. Vibration is how all matter comes into form, and sound is how we first perceive the world in the womb, so there is something primal or originating at work here. I am interested in facilitating new pathways for human potential through this ancient, powerful and underused medium.
Kim and Alan are some of the original players of the Hang and Huaca, and have now designed their own instrument. Playing the Samalan feels like painting with sound, and can learned by any focused musician. It bridges the inherent gap between performer and audience.
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Now in our 5th season, the Turquoise Yantra Grotto is a house concert series for avant improvisers and invented instrumentalists with a focus on ethno-modernism and extended techniques. We hold a monthly event which is part concert and part social club, near Twin Peaks in San Francisco. The Turquoise Yantra Grotto is home to many unique invented instruments including the Zen Industrial Gamelan (or grand metalliphone), the Gamelan Piano, and several sonic paintings, as well as instruments by Bart Hopkin, Tom Nunn, David Samas, Dan Gottwald, Peter Whitehead, Bryan Day, Susan Rawcliffe and many others. The 4 pianos in the house are each uniquely tuned for a variety of repertoire showcased in our solo piano series.
Cost: $10-15