About the Performance Lectures
SIX’s initiative to engage artist-composers is wayfinding through the chaos of the present moment offers an opportunity to orient ourselves with an eye to the future and intentionality in the present moment. This current global moment of change (climate, health, human rights) is an invitation to artists to co-create a future that works for everyone and this is only possible if individuals and collectives see their roles and experiences represented within it.
The late Toni Morrison described artists as ‘bearing witness’ to a collective struggle, crafting a record of our existence and engaging in the hard work to remain authentic. For example, the blues art form bears witness to celebration of life and the promise of freedom, despite a history of pain and subjugation.
"Art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances."
Toni Morrison
My vision for the role of the arts in social innovation is to bear witness in the way Toni Morrison describes and transform what we think is possible. For example, jazz as an art form bears witness to the diversity of musical traditions it emerged from and transforms what we think is possible within a tune through improvisation.
Improvisation is the spontaneous creation of music. When a musician improvises, he or she invents music at the moment of performance, building on the existing theme and structure of the music. Jazz generally consists of a combination of composed, arranged and improvised elements though the proportions of one to the other may vary. In collective improvisation, two or more members of a group improvise at the same time. Improvisation, both collective and solo, builds a relationship between the members of the ensemble, helping them to “talk” to one another and express their personalities, hopes and visions for the future.
In other words, improvisation is what makes jazz the music of possibilities.
THE FINAL SYMPHONY
‘Sounding Together’