Cobra workshop at Marsden Jazz Festival, 09/10/10

Cobra workshop

On Saturday 9 October hcmf// and Marsden Jazz Festival joined forces to present an improvisation workshop for all abilities at the Standedge Tunnel Visitor Centre, led by musicians Ben McCabe and Matt Robinson.

Participants from ages 12 upwards came along on the day with a variety of instruments including guitar, bass, voice and even a home-made one-stringed violin and spent two hours getting to grips with the various improvisation rules of John Zorn’s piece Cobra – with much laughter! Workshop leader Matt Robinson said:

"Cobra is probably the most celebrated of John Zorn’s Game Pieces having been developed in 1984 and played with numerous ensembles throughout the world; from small quintets to classical symphony orchestras. It was conceived as a system to structure freely improvised music with very detailed rules and no pre-conceived sequence of events for a group of musical improvisors and a prompter.

"The workshop went fantastically well; the entire group was enthusiastic and willing to learn and experiment - a tremendous amount of listening and sensitive playing went on with a very diverse and unusual selection of instruments. It was really interesting and very productive in the fairly short amount of time!"

You can listen to one of the Cobra improvisations from the workshop by clicking the player on the right. If you’d like to be kept informed of previous workshop opportunities, please email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

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