NYTE Statement
NEW YORK TRUMPET ENSEMBLE
Group Statement
The New York Trumpet Ensemble is a collective of musician-activists seeking to promote improvisation as an experiment tied directly to culture itself. The members see improvisation always differently, yet in performance we have commonly sought to:
1) provide a sustainable practice of creative music in our cultural moment
2) offer/problematize alternative communities by foregrounding music as a social discourse and
3) feedback the effects of technology on musical culture in order to displace the Eurological categorizations of sound as organized by reason.
A critical component of our music revolves around the impact that technology has on the way people listen to and live with music. Digital technology (encompassing recording technique, the Internet, iPods) has transformed music into an informational flow that obliterates notions of chronology, authorship and intellectual property, cultural identification, and style. Given that playing an instrument is itself a form of biotechnology (the body and the "machine" functioning as one), improvised music allows for the transformation of the technological into a location of social and spiritual activity. The NYTE seeks to investigate these issues with improvisation, which becomes a real-time networking of social interdependencies, personal musical biography, cultivated technique, and stylistic signposts.
Currently the group is made up of three trumpets, bass, and piano. Although the music utilizes in a general way the practices outlined above, specific reference points of style include free improvisation, free jazz, 80's and 90's pop music, and most recently (and perhaps inevitably) opera. Some of our most exciting moments in performance have been when these various elements are not mixed, but layered in a sort of live "stereophonic" texture.
The group aims to reflect the current musical landscape but also to project a model for change, particularly in the music education system. NYTE believes that it is essential for young musicians to have an active role in thinking critically about how and why they create music. Improvisation has the unique ability to offer young musicians the agency and mobility to explore their individual relationship to music and culture, while also allowing the opportunity to form communities of difference with other players. NYTE is committed to pursuing improvisation as an activity which can open windows for musicians to find their own path in music, regardless of style or training.
Group Statement
The New York Trumpet Ensemble is a collective of musician-activists seeking to promote improvisation as an experiment tied directly to culture itself. The members see improvisation always differently, yet in performance we have commonly sought to:
1) provide a sustainable practice of creative music in our cultural moment
2) offer/problematize alternative communities by foregrounding music as a social discourse and
3) feedback the effects of technology on musical culture in order to displace the Eurological categorizations of sound as organized by reason.
A critical component of our music revolves around the impact that technology has on the way people listen to and live with music. Digital technology (encompassing recording technique, the Internet, iPods) has transformed music into an informational flow that obliterates notions of chronology, authorship and intellectual property, cultural identification, and style. Given that playing an instrument is itself a form of biotechnology (the body and the "machine" functioning as one), improvised music allows for the transformation of the technological into a location of social and spiritual activity. The NYTE seeks to investigate these issues with improvisation, which becomes a real-time networking of social interdependencies, personal musical biography, cultivated technique, and stylistic signposts.
Currently the group is made up of three trumpets, bass, and piano. Although the music utilizes in a general way the practices outlined above, specific reference points of style include free improvisation, free jazz, 80's and 90's pop music, and most recently (and perhaps inevitably) opera. Some of our most exciting moments in performance have been when these various elements are not mixed, but layered in a sort of live "stereophonic" texture.
The group aims to reflect the current musical landscape but also to project a model for change, particularly in the music education system. NYTE believes that it is essential for young musicians to have an active role in thinking critically about how and why they create music. Improvisation has the unique ability to offer young musicians the agency and mobility to explore their individual relationship to music and culture, while also allowing the opportunity to form communities of difference with other players. NYTE is committed to pursuing improvisation as an activity which can open windows for musicians to find their own path in music, regardless of style or training.
