The quality of our perceptions determines the quality of our judgement. Our judgement determines how we interact with the world. How we interact with the world changes the world. So, the quality of our perceptions changes the world. Power is the capacity to access what is possible. (Robert Fripp)
I didn’t know music was a style and that it had rules and stuff, I thought it was just sound. I thought you had to play to play, and I still think that. (Ornette Coleman)
Music is the architecture of silence. (Robert Fripp)
Sound is to people what the sun is to light. (Ornette Coleman)
In popular culture, our musicians sing to us in our own voice. In mass culture they shout what we want to hear. (Robert Fripp)
There is never any end... There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we’ve discovered in its pure state. (John Coltrane)
The concern of the musician is music. The concern of the professional musician is business. (Robert Fripp)
When you are playing with someone who really has something to say, even though they may be otherwise quite different in style, there’s one thing that remains constant. And that is the tension of the experience, that electricity, that kind of feeling that is a lift sort of feeling. No matter where it happens, you know when that feeling comes upon you, and it makes you feel happy. (John Coltrane)
Without deviation progress is not possible. (Frank Zappa)
Music is a plane of wisdom, because music is a universal language, it is a language of honor, it is a noble precept, a gift of the Airy Kingdom, music is air, a universal existence … common to all the living. (Sun Ra)
Music is always a commentary on society. (Frank Zappa)
The possible has been tried and failed. Now it’s time to try the impossible. (Sun Ra)
Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid. (Frank Zappa)
Art does not begin with imitation, but with discipline. (Sun Ra)
Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something. (Frank Zappa)
The world thinks that music is a commercial commodity. I’m glad that is not my code. (Sun Ra)
Uncertainty is free. I can’t predict its tangent. (Lisa Robertson)
The planet is asleep and it’s the fault of musicians who are untrue to themselves. (Sun Ra)
Rhythm is a figured, embodied improvisation, not a measure. (Lisa Robertson)
Music cannot go on as a lopsided affair belonging only to men. As music changes so will the world as we know it. We need a balanced society with equal representation for both women and men and support for all composers and musicians. (Pauline Oliveros)
This continuous language of collective formations is the commons. (Lisa Robertson)
History is an angel being blown backwards into the future. (Laurie Anderson)
Deep Listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, or one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening represents a heightened state of awareness and connects to all that there is. (Pauline Oliveros)
Meet the unexpected with clarity. Honour the impossible with discipline. (The Silence Collective)
The fewer expectations you have, the better. (Laurie Anderson)
Musical outcome trumps intention. Be indifferent to indifference. (The Silence Collective)
No matter what we contribute, there is a powerful rhythm in life that drives people to be more than their individual selves––it is a sum of parts. And no matter what our role is––it is an important one … We are all interconnected. It is one song. (Hamid Drake)
Flow is an impediment to resistance; improvisation is the condition of both in the same moment. (The Silence Collective)
Free spiritual music is ordered to celebrate life to praise every part of creation. This music is done in the hope that a miracle might occur. (William Parker)
Music imagines what silence implies––listening aspires to both. (The Silence Collective)
Why should madmen decide who is wanted and … unwanted? (William Parker)
Music fulfills emptiness with potential. (The Silence Collective)
The core of all music is vibration of sound, initiated by human beings, all sons and daughters of creation. (William Parker)
Tell no lies claim no easy victories. (Amilcar Cabral)
Music is the lasting response … the burning throne, the prodigal daughter, and the rain cloud over the profound branches. (William Parker)
Music combines stasis and mutation in a field of vibration, resonance, and flux. Its sources and effects are irreducible. (The Silence Collective)
Creation exists only in the unforeseen made necessary. (Pierre Boulez)
Humanity without music is unthinkable. (The Silence Collective)
The underlying language of language is music. (The Silence Collective)
The earth cannot move without music. The earth moves in a certain rhythm, a certain sound, a certain note. When the music stops the earth will stop and everything upon it will die. (Sun Ra)
Canadian film composer Mark Korven is mostly known for his haunting scores for the indie sci-fi horror film CUBE and most recently for THE WITCH. To give himself a tool to create organic and handmade analog soundscapes, he teamed up with luthier extraordinaire Tony Duggan-Smith to create a musical instrument specializing in “horrifying sounds” called the APPREHENSION ENGINE. After CNN produced a short documentary on the instrument, it became a viral hit, garnering more than 5 million views on YouTube. Over 140 articles and interviews have been written about it, the most recent attention coming both from a feature on National Public Radio in the US and a filmed segment of OUTRAGEOUS ACTS OF SCIENCE shot by their UK crew. In 2017 Mark travelled to NYC to perform for the INTO THE VEIL festival, which takes place in the 200-year-old Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. He also traveled to Madrid to perform on the popular Spanish TV show EL HORMIGUERO, and was invited to perform with the Apprehension Engine at Birmingham’s SUPERSONIC FESTIVAL.
Having completed the Arthur Lismer Guitar for the McMichael Gallery Group of Seven Guitar Project (2017-18), Tony was asked by friend and composer Mark Korven (THE WITCH) to build an all-acoustic instrument dedicated to scoring horror films for a TIFF Masterclass. An earlier experiment from the two of them had resulted in the SARELLO, a hybrid of the cello and sarangi with both bowed and sympathetic strings. For this new instrument Mark had a shopping list of potential sound sources, some dating back to the 10th century and some inspired by others, which they took as a starting point and riffed on as the instrument was being designed. By the time it was finished the APPREHENSION ENGINE had the core elements of Mark’s original ideas and others fleshed out and added to by Tony: an inspiring collaborative project.