Open Cobra:An audience-participatory version of John Zorn's CobraAbout Open CobraThe Mills College Art Museum and Music Department are pleased to announce that Canadian artist Misha Glouberman will be performing at Mills College. Glouberman will present a performance of "Open Cobra" on Tuesday, October 5 from 6:30–10:30 pm in the Student Union, Rothwell Center. Admission is free.
Glouberman's
Open Cobra begins with an ensemble of musicians playing Cobra, as it has traditionally been performed for the past 25 years, without explanation. The game is then gradually explained, with the help of the "Cobra-TRON", an electronic Cobra scoreboard. The audience is then invited to join in the game, replacing the band in an all-vocal rendition, guided through a series of games and exercises that transform an audience of non-musicians into a Cobra ensemble. Open Cobra begins as a performance, and ends as participatory event that has been described as "a cross between an asylum and the best carnival in the world" (eye weekly, Toronto).
The event is based on John Zorn's Cobra, a chaotic, often-cacophonous music composition structured as an intricate game with complex rules, which Zorn has insisted never be published.
This presentation of Open Cobra will feature the Music Improvisation Ensemble at Mills College.
Note: The first half of the October 5 program is a "spectator" event. Audience members are invited to watch Cobra, and see the rules explained. The second half is a "participatory" event. In order to attend the second half, you must participate. Audience members will be given an opportunity to try a short vocal improvisation game, to see if they will enjoy the game. No previous music experience or skill of any kind is required to take part in this event. The full event, including both parts, is long, and will likely end around 10:00 pm.
About Misha GloubermanMisha Glouberman is a Canadian artist, performer, and facilitator, with an ongoing interest in how groups of people interact with each other. His Terrible Noises for Beautiful People series has gotten groups of people doing vocal sound improvisation in a variety of contexts, including a participatory rendition of John Zorn's Cobra, a very large birthday party with noises and cake, an impromptu choir of 200 programmers at a software developers conference, and an all-night performance of over a thousand participants at the Nuit Blanche contemporary art festival in Toronto. In 2010 he will be presenting a Terrible Noises event at Ann Hamilton's Sound Tower at the Oliver Ranch in Sonoma County, California.
Glouberman's other projects include Trampoline Hall, a barroom lecture series where people speak on subjects outside their areas of expertise. The New Yorker praised the series for "celebrating eccentricity and do-it-yourself inventiveness," and the Village Voice wrote "we love it." The series has run monthly in Toronto since 2001, where it has sold out every show since its inception, and has played in many other cities in the US and Canada.
Glouberman is currently finishing a book, with the working title
The Chairs Are Where The People Go, which will be published by Faber and Faber in the spring of 2011. The book is a collaboration between Glouberman and author Sheila Heti, and features a collection of Glouberman's ideas on improvisation and other subjects.
For more about Glouberman, visit the Misha Glouberman School of Learning web site:
http://www.schooloflearning.orgMisha Glouberman's lecture and Open Cobra are supported by the Oliver Ranch Foundation.
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