On several Friday lunch hours this summer, you can escape your kitchen or cafe, trip over to the Schneider Art Museum and catch the “haunting, breathy and mysterious” sounds of the shakuhachi as this ancient Japanese bamboo flute resounds in the excellent acoustics amid the art.
It’s free, fun, different and not planned out. Longtime local composer-performer Todd Barton -- and usually some friends -- will wing it, creating the music that comes to them as they interact with each other, listeners and whatever musical sprites happen to be influencing them on that day, in that museum, which is at the east end of Southern Oregon University, above the intersection of Ashland Street with Siskiyou Boulevard.
“Improv is all about listening to the notes I produce and listening to where they take me,” says Barton. “Improv with another person is even more exciting. The sounds grow and develop.”
The resident composer of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he’s worked for 42 years, Barton has a thing for both electronic and acoustical instruments and a love for improv that hatches performances “that are a surprise for me and the audience.”
In other words, get ready for some original music, never heard by anyone and frequently interwoven with “the haunting, breathy and mysterious tones of the shakuhachi, which sound like the wind in the trees.”
Where does the inspiration come from when you walk into a performance without any playlist or sheet music?
From your mind and heart, of course, but, says Barton, also from the audience. “As Pauline Oliveros (electronic composer and accordionist) said, ‘if the people on stage are listening, then the people in the audience are listening.’ When that works, the audience and performer are one.”
As the aural muse of the Festival chats, you suddenly hear tinkling, soothing music, but whence cometh these magical strains?
“Ringtone,” says Barton.
“Shakuhachi?”
“Absolutely,” he notes, adding, “I got tired of hearing all these hyper, anxious tones. They’d make me hyper and anxious. These shakuhachi tones take getting used to because they don’t grab your attention. But after a while they kind of say ‘I can’t wait to talk to you.’”
Note: you can listen and download 15 ringtones for $10 from www.toddbarton.com. The site says, “The shakuhachi flute has been used for meditation and breath work for over a millennium. With shakuhachi ringtones you’ll be gently reminded to take a breath before facing the unexpected.”
Barton has been an adjunct professor at SOU since 1972 and teaches music composition, orchestration and compositional technique and electronic and computer music. He refers to his electronic instruments as “my sonic lego set.”
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