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 UPCOMING WORKSHOPS AT DECAY OLYMPIA.
Spring 2026: Mon 1.12 Wed 1.28 Mon 2.9 Wed 2.25 Mon 3.9 Wed 3.25 Mon 4.6 Wed 4.22 Wed 5.6 Mon 5.18 Wed 6.3 Mon 6.15

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

In this workshop we will quickly create tasteful musical environments using a language that controls and encourages surprising ideas, unique creative power, and different musical attitudes that each musician brings

We will practice varied ways to communicate while the music is happening and how to comfortably respond intentionally and musically.

We will focus on expressing our unique ideas while others will be keeping their own, and we will practice hearing and understanding our own contribution to a larger unity.

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

  • Play from a point of view that the players are all composers. 
  • Shape the piece together – treat each others’ musical elements as the essential parts of the current musical piece. 
  • Make decisions that are daring, sensitive, and artistically smart.
  • Trust feelings. Underrate scrabbling around.
  • Back up the declarations that were made.
  • Consider all options within the elements of a piece
  • Keep elements short, connected, and relevant. 
  • Push the music forward. 
  • Be aware and avoid duplicating musical ideas between pieces – make each piece truly different.
  • Conductors can only give their point of view as listeners while the musicians play.
  • As a conductor, avoid controlling ideas. 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.