SOUNDPAINTING

WE INSIST! organizes workshops on Soundpainting, a real-time, multidisciplinary, multi-sensory composition technique developed in the mid-1970s by the Newyorker musician Walter Thompson.

The workshops are aimed at different target of people, with different ages and skill levels, not necessarily experts in music theory, e.g. children and students from schools of all levels, students from music, dance, and theater schools, choirs and bands, but also people who don’t belong to music world to create moments of sharing and discussions.

The soundpainter – director – uses a repertoire of codified gestures to communicate with the group of participants and uses their responses and reactions to evolve the composition. The outcome of the workshop is therefore never entirely predictable; it is unique and unrepeatable each time, even when it starts from a pre-existing composition work.

This particular methodology allows anyone to immediately come into direct contact with sound matter and their potential and to mature their expressive vocabulary in a short time.

Through Soundpainting, one can therefore rediscover the social and group dimension of music making; stimulate individual and collective creativity and expressiveness; explore the possibilities of one’s instrument, voice, and body; promote understanding of musical phenomena by directly experiencing music making and the process of creation; grasp the importance of repetition as a fundamental ingredient of musical language.