Improvisers Orchestra Workshop

MUSICIANS OF ALL LEVELS ARE INVITED TO BRING YOUR INSTRUMENT AND INVENT MUSIC ON THE SPOT TOGETHER AS A GROUP

SIGN UP TO THE UPCOMING WORKSHOP Wednesday 12.1.2025+12.10.2025 7-10PM AT DECAY OLYMPIA.

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With the Improvisers Orchestra Workshop, composer Ofir Klemperer is providing a safe forum for creative research, concentration, and honest expression through collaborative experimentation in sound.

In this workshop we will spontaneously create exquisite soundscapes using the concept of conduction, or conducted improvisation, that controls and encourages the unpredictable ideas, individual imaginations, and diverse approaches to music that each musician brings

We will quickly adapt musical concepts and ways to communicate while the music is happening.

We will focus on maintaining our unique ideas while others maintain their own, and we will practice hearing and understanding our own contribution to a larger whole.

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Here are a few subjects to keep in mind while playing in a conducted improvising orchestra setting:

  • Play from a perspective that the participants are all composers. 
  • Compose the piece together – treat each others’ musical material as the material of the current piece. 
  • Make decisions that are bold, conscious, and tasteful. 
  • Trust intuition. Minimize search.
  • Stand strong and back up the statements that were made.
  • Explore all possibilities within the material of a piece
  • Keep things concise and to the point. 
  • Drive the music forward. 
  • Be conscious and avoid repetition of ideas between pieces – make each piece truly different.
  • Conductors can only give their perspective as listeners while the musicians play.
  • As a conductor, avoid control of content. Work with what the musicians bring.

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What to expect:
You will learn some concepts and conduction signs in a workshop setting. 
In the workshop, everyone gets to play actual music from the first moment. 
The participants will be invited to play what they really like, while the group will synchronize in volume and energy. 
Each participating musician will be given the spotlight.
While the participants are introduced to new conduction signs, you will keep using all the signs you already learned.

We will achieve with the group an understanding and a performance of complex combinations of ideas. 
For example: 
I, as a conductor, use hand signals to communicate to participants to “play”, and then “repeat what you just played”. Then “memorize what you are playing right now” (each “instruction” has a hand signal that we practiced before).
Then, I signal in sequence “look at me while you’re playing as I’m describing what will happen next”, “play one continuous sound”, “three hits”, and “breath in/out”.
then I signal “now play the instructions”.
After the musicians play together a phrase constructed of one continuous sound, three hits, and they breath in and out, I signal “play what you memorized” to recollect the repeated idea they played before the change.

After the introduction workshop, participants will be invited to practice instruction of the group. That is usually a good time to practice specific signs and concepts in the form of an instant performed composition. 
The musicians are encouraged to push the envelope and focus on signs that didn’t work well in the introduction or in recent sessions.

While the overall practice is inspiring and jubilant, we aim to challenge the group’s creativity, and encourage collective listening and sharp reactions.

An Improvisers Orchestra is a forum for experimentation with sound and communication beyond language. It functions as the fertile ground that leads to the formation of creative work in all fields. People develop their own pieces and subgroups within this forum. It is a cultural movement.

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Here are some examples of Ofir’s Improvisers Orchestras, Workshops, and Audience Participation:

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About the instructor:
Ofir Klemperer is a sound-based artist, composer, improviser, and songwriter.

In his music, Ofir includes instrumentalists and thinkers from different backgrounds and mediums to interact with pre-composed materials. His work includes acoustic and electronic instrumentation, conducted improvisation, audience participation, and performance of original songs. Ofir aims for complex and uncharted territories of sound production through a soothing, casual performance, in the form of live folk/rock/jazz/classical music concerts, and DIY musical and social gatherings.

His work has been featured in Israel Music Festival, in Musikprotokoll in Graz, Austria, Bolzano Jazz Festival in Italy and in MATA Festival in NYC. His work was also performed in Athens, Chicago, Amsterdam, Belgrade, Brussels, and Sao Paolo.

While receiving his Bachelor and Masters degrees in music composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in the Netherlands, Ofir also specialized in Orchestral Improvisation Conduction. Since relocating to the United States in 2013, he led numerous improvisation workshops for ensembles and choirs, and formed many ensembles who played his music.

Ofir has recently relocated from Atlanta, Georgia, where he lived for seven years, and collaborated with the largest and wildest ensemble he ever formed – the Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra.

He is now living in Olympia, Washington, and is seeking new collaborations.