With Julia Brooks, astrid hubbard flynn, Jacob Frost, Justin Massey, Connor Scroggins and Nick Ortiz. Thanks to SPLICE Institute and Popebama (Erin Rogers / Dennis Sullivan) for creating the virtual free improv space where this interaction took place.

Sextet Improvisation @ SPLICE Institute 7-2-2021

Me (astrid) on vocal mic and stethoscope, processed on a wide array of hardware by Femi Shonuga Fleming aka Sadnoise. Warning: This is loud.

Improvisation w/ Sadnoise 3-21-22

Katie Lipow, voice 
Markus Kaitila, piano 
poetry by Ren L[i]u

find more of Ren's work on Instagram at @poemeloaday and @renallegedly

i picked up the phone
today to greet
Something on the other
end

    i picked up the
    phone, its body
    heavy in my palm
    heavy and
    stuck
        to these damp hands
        this layer of wet
        the only vestige of
        cold dewdrops
        in my hand

i picked up the phone
today, only to
    hear your entire being
    crackle through
    and I could’ve sworn you might’ve
    been crunching chips on the other end
    just to feign
    Static
    and I love you for that
    which I did not say
    just inhaled your words through my nose
    and exhaled only breath with my mouth

i picked up the phone
today, for only
    your voice to fill
    all my senses
    my fingertips grazing along
        the topsoil of this wall for your skin I cannot reach
    smelling the cedar of your clothes
    and your voice, god
    your voice
    that symphonic
    surprise
    of stepping into something beautiful
    crunching leaves of
    golds and auburns and crimsons
    beneath your feet
    to have to pay attention to
    everything you are walking with
    you always knew how to make autumn in springtime
    you equinox of harvest
    you bounty
    when the rest of us are just counting buds

I picked up the phone
    today, to only taste blank air
    after we said our goodbyes
    no autumn
    or leaves
    or anything
    my palms fully dried

i picked up the phone
    only to find it
    full of everything
    and with no gravity at all

elegy for seeds unsaid

I've finally written a solo flute piece for my fellow flutists to use and enjoy. Thanks so much to Anjali Shinde for learning and recording it.

translucence

Performed by the Horizon Ensemble, conducted by Julian Gau, in summer 2021.

Cloud Seven (with Horizon Ensemble)

While procrastinating on other projects, I found myself playing intervals on the piano, listening to them decay, and experimenting with striking other notes while holding them down. The Kukuruz Quartet's residency at Brown seemed like the perfect opportunity to turn this concept into a piece. For both the performers and the audience (who are invited to sit onstage), this piece is an invitation to listen closely to minute, often-overlooked sonic fluctuations within the mechanisms of pianos, be they echoes, pedaling, or the fingers on the keys. Most rhythms are unspecified, and the texture slowly builds in density until a conclusion in the low register. Thanks very much to the Kukuruz Quartet and Marcel Zaes for this opportunity, and to Prof. Shawn Jaeger for his advice on the concept and notation.

Kukuruz Quartet @ Brown Feb 2019

Echolocation (with Kukuruz Quartet)

Improvised by Zach Kapner, Harry Pershing, Andrew Javens, saxophones / Elana Hausknecht, trumpet / Deven Carmichael, trombone / Maya Polsky, Charlie Sapperstein, guitars / Matan Gans, bass 

Complete score (rules of improvisation): 

Instruments: Players may use their voices, bodies, or any instruments to play the game. 

Starting: Form an approximate circle and designate a leader. If working in a tonal environment, the leader should designate a starting key. The leader improvises a repeating figure a few seconds long. Choose to imitate the figure if you wish, or remain silent until you feel the time is right. Imitations can be exact unison, or slight rhythmic variations or simple harmonizations, but should remain identifiably part of the same figure. 

Transfer of Leadership: 
	1) As soon as a repeating theme is established throughout the group, the leader makes eye contact with another player, and blinks. Power is transferred at the moment of the blink. 
	2) After the blink, the second player is the new leader, and changes their figure into a new figure. Try to create a new figure that can dovetail with the old figure, and/or can easily be imitated quickly by the previous leader. 
	3) The previous leader responds by changing their figure in a way that is deferential to the new leader. 
	4) Once it is audible that two people are repeating new material, other players should shift the figure as well. 
	5) The new leader should repeat the process of power transfer. 

Accusations: 
 	1) If any third person notices the new leader starting a new figure before the previous leader has managed to imitate the figure, they may point/gesture to the person they think is the new leader, then rapidly change to a completely different figure (with contrasting key, register, rhythm and/or timbre). 
	2a) If the accuser is correct, the new leader nods to concede, and is out of the game. The accuser becomes the leader and must continue the process of eye contact. Everyone imitates the accuser, who is the new leader. 
	2b) If the old leader has already begun imitating the new leader, the new leader shrugs, and the accuser must resume imitating the new leader. 
	2c) If the person they accuse is not the new leader, that accused person shakes their head in defiance. The accuser is out of the game and must go silent immediately. 

Referee: If you feel it is necessary, designate one participant to sit out as a referee. If it is clear that all players have lost track of who is the leader, the referee can randomly designate a new leader to keep the game going. 

Ending: 
Option 1: The game ends when only one person remains. 
Option 2: Anyone can end the game at any time by changing the current figure into applause. If there is an audience, players should continue applauding until the audience joins in. The game then ends when the applause finishes.

Fall 2018 Concert

Invisible Power Exchange

"Wind Widths" grew rather quickly out of a single kernel, stated near the beginning: an ascending line with a 7/8 groove in the violin, harmonized by the viola on the offbeats. The piece follows an ABA trajectory from there to a desolate landscape and back again. Along the way, it explores tone color ("wind"), registral space ("widths"), and some unsynchronized portions (seemingly "falling apart"). Thanks to the Momenta Quartet for performing the piece, and to Shawn Jaeger for his astute feedback on it. I hope you enjoy!

Wind Widths: I. Grayscale (with Momenta Quartet)

It's another instructional game-score! (Though we did not follow all of the rules in this recording.) 

Nicholas Christenson, bass / Seamus Hubbard Flynn, flute

Threads (with Nicholas Christenson)

Seamus Hubbard Flynn, voice/MaxMSP 

There have been many attempts to measure the line, and all of them have failed. 

Appropriately, the groups doing the measurement have been those most concerned with the question of its ownership (of buying and selling it). 
	Some of them came as close as to consider that the line might really be the area of a region, 
		or the thickness of a surface. 

But all of them have failed 
	because its true length inevitably exceeds any measurement. 

All attempted measurements began from zero, 
	but the line approaches infinity, 
		making it just as reasonable to measure by subtraction,
			determining which things in the universe are not the object of measurement. 

Consider also that in the time elapsed during measurement, the line will have 
	shifted, 
		rolling over slightly in its sleep to find the most comfortable position, 
			or expanding and contracting as if breathing. 

In time, it will break through anything put in its path to stop it. 

It is a shoreline, 
	or a fault line, 
		or a river, 
			or even your own skin. 

The moment will arrive when you need its power. 

(You will find it everywhere.)

Lines, subject to change

Many field recordings taken in the second half of 2020 in Boston, MA, Ann Arbor, MI, and Saint Paul, MN. Sometimes placed into the mix unedited, other times looped, filtered, slowed down, reversed, etc. Collaboratively assembled by 琳琳 and astrid hubbard flynn.

throughout, underneath (with 琳琳)

composer, performer and improvisor located on Dakota land
linktr.ee/astridhubbardflynn

astrid hubbard flynn

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