Racer Session #274 | Ammon Swinbank | May 24, 2015
Extended Horizons Project
The idea for this ensemble originally grew out of the need to explore extended techniques (nontraditional ways of playing an instrument) in an ensemble context. While there is much music written for the contemporary flute player, most of it is unaccompanied solo music. I wanted an ensemble of musicians playing instruments different from my own who were open to playing their instruments in unorthodox ways. Improvisation is perhaps the best way to uncover ways of playing an instrument that you might not have thought of before because you are required to make spontaneous decisions based on the spontaneous decisions of others. Extended Horizons Project includes Julio Lopez on electric guitar, Ebony Miranda on cello, Griffin Boyd on electronics and Ammon Swinbank on flute. For the open session afterward, I encourage everyone to explore nontraditional playing techniques such as percussive sounds, double stops, harmonics, textural effects and altered fingerings.
Here is an example of what we’ve been up to: https://soundcloud.com/ammonswinbank/extended-horizons-project-4302015?in=ammonswinbank/sets/extended-horizons-project-vol