Location

Wiesner Room

Description

Bart Hopkin will talk about musical instruments and sound, with the following question as a starting point: to what extent do musicians—composers, improvisers, and instrument makers—seek mastery and control over the sounds they produce; or, conversely, to what extent do they knock about in a world of existing sound possibilities, making the most of what they happen to find? The talk will include examples of a diversity of unusual and fascinating musical instruments from makers around the world, with recorded sounds and images plus live demonstrations of instruments and sound devices.

Biographies

Bart Hopkin is maker of acoustic musical instruments and a student of musical instruments worldwide. He received a BA magna cum laude from Harvard University in folklore and mythology specializing in ethnomusicology in 1974, and later picked up a BA in music education and a teaching credential at San Francisco State University. From 1985 to 1999 he edited the quarterly journal Experimental Musical Instruments. The journal served as an essential resource and clearinghouse in an otherwise scattered, but lively and growing field. Since 1994, Hopkin has written several books on instruments and their construction, and produced several CDs featuring the work of innovative instrument makers. He has taught musical instrument construction at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, presented talks at the Acoustical Society of America, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University, and consulted and presented workshops for the Exploratorium in San Francisco. In his work as an instrument maker, Hopkin makes no claim to fine craftsmanship. His primary interest has been in exploring diverse acoustic systems. He has, for instance, developed alternative systems for flexible pitch control in wind instruments, and explored the peculiar acoustics of multiple conjoined strings. His Savart's Wheel, a sort of tuned, motor-driven scraper with a range of over two chromatic octaves, is one of the most irritating musical instruments ever devised.

Host/Chair: Pattie Maes