Aesthetics: Shunyata Improvisation Group play a series of concerts inspired by 7 Zen Art Principles

Concert  5 Silence (Limitless Silence, the inward-looking Mind)

Support Richard Scott and David Birchall (guitar duo)

This concert focusses upon the Zen art aesthetic of Silence.

“In art everything is possible, but everything is not necessary. The silence must be longer. This music is about the silence. The sounds are there to surround the silence.” (Arvo Part)

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear.” ( John Cage)

In Zen aesthetics Silence broadly suggests an active calm and a calm approach within the hurly burly of daily life. An example often quoted is walking in formal gardens; adjacent to city life, we are contemplative and refreshed but not in retreat or detached. Silence in Zen also can imply the meditative state where the mind’s attention is turned inward; a feeling generating expansiveness where limits are not perceived.

David Birchall

Born in Leicester 1981. A musician living and working in Manchester in real time with sound and instruments. This performance practice as an improviser becomes a way to think more widely about how sound functions in space and the built environment. Improvising solo and with others using guitars, objects and non-fixed instrument structures. Performing with many Manchester based/related improvisors including Sam Andreae, Andrew Cheetham, Otto Willberg, Greta Buitkute, THF Drenching, Richard Scott, Philip Marks, Adam Fairhall, Luke Poot, London based Colin Webster and Amsterdam native Rogier Smal. One-offs and random stage/studio collaborations have involved working with figures such as Marshall Allen, Rhys Chatham, Mick Beck, Phil Minton and Mark Sanders.

Richard Scott

Artist and musician previously based in Birmingham and now based in Gateshead since 2020.

The art and the music Richard makes are related to one another – in both areas he is interested in perceptual phenomena; feedback systems; interference patterns; varying modes of perception and control. He has played music since he was a child and has been making visual art since around 2013 when he started making abstract drawings as a way to approach from a different perspective the same systems and processes he is interested in as a composer.

Richard plays mostly contemporary experimental music, usually improvised and on string instruments. Richard has performed and recorded in the UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and Slovenia, and has played with Tapiwa Svosve, Silvan Schmid, Eddie Prévost, Sarah Farmer, Andrew Woodhead, Phil Durrant, Samuel Rodgers, James Opstad, Mark Sanders, Rachel Musson, Hannah Marshall, Xhosa Cole, James Malone and Joe Wright. With Tapiwa Svosve. He also co-runs the label Physical Correlate.