Fifth edition of the essential publication series for experimental and graphic music scores, from the Berlin-based collective smallest functional unit. A vital resource for performers, composers, and anyone fascinated by unconventional approaches to notation and the organization of sound.
Smu was founded in 2020 by Tony Buck (percussion), Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet, objects), Magda Mayas (piano, objects), Ute Wassermann (voice, objects), and Racha Gharbieh (organisation) with the aim of performing and publishing unconventional, hybrid notational formats and graphic scores by international composers. Graphème follows in the spirit of landmark collections like John Cage's Notations (1968) and Theresa Sauer's Notations 21 (2009), addressing the longstanding imbalance in music publishing that has left experimental notation underrepresented.
As with previous editions, Volume 5 presents a range of approaches and interests - text and instruction, diagrams, geometry, textures, colours, shades and shapes - alongside hard-to-define offerings in this exciting interpretive and collaborative field. Some composers provide detailed instructions and procedures, systems with which to process information and data, following mapped-out routes. Others present more ambiguous and intuitive approaches, inviting guided creativity, deciphering puzzles and enigmatic clues, encouraging personal responses to subtle shadings both literally and metaphorically.
The artists represented showcase a diversity of creative imagination, offering rich and varied methods of working. In all, there is a reimagining and repurposing of traditional score-making, utilizing new and old technology to pursue inventive unconventional outcomes. What all these pieces share is a fascination and curiosity with inventive strategies for making music, coordinating actions, and interpreting ideas.
The pieces are presented in the hope that they will be explored and performed - deciphered and investigated - offering performers, interpreters and listeners the opportunity to engage with, and gain insight into, new and sometimes challenging ideas about music-making and performance. Works in which improvisation, composition, interpretation, performance and sound art merge require relevant modes of representation. Graphème bridges these areas, making available hybrid forms of notation in a practical, accessible and approachable way.
Previous editions have featured Tomomi Adachi, Lotte Anker, Phill Niblock, Jon Rose, Nate Wooley, Marina Cyrino, Tina Douglas, Lloyd Swanton, Bonnie Jones, Gino Robair and many others.
Essential for admirers of experimental notation, graphic scores, free improvisation, Fluxus, the Wandelweiser collective, and the broader tradition of composer-performers working beyond the limitations of traditional western notation.
