Prepared Guitar Ensemble, a collaboration founded by San Francisco based composer Matt Robidoux in 2019 with Creativity Explored, is a space where artists meet to make sound inclusively with instruments of their own design. Our instruments were designed by CE artists remotely in a series of Zoom workshops from 2020-2021 and realized by instrument builder and multi-instrumentalist Sudhu Tewari.

Prepared Guitar Ensemble is a group dedicated to expanding the improvising community. The social functions of ‘Prepared Guitar Ensemble’ are similarly characteristic of more well-known free improvisation musical structures: to actively engage/reveal dynamic modes of being, reform exclusionary practices, and provide opportunities for individual and collective human flourishing. The work we do intends to engage members of the group in a manner that does not privilege formal musical training. In this music the only constant is the individual’s idiosyncratic approach to the instrument, and a collective attempt at improvisational unity.

There is no rubric in our collective practice of right or wrong notes as we express ourselves through sound. The prepared guitar lends itself well to this goal—as it takes an instrument with specific associated sounds and re-makes it through modifications and activations via unconventionally musical objects, so that it no longer requires the same motor skills or formal musical training, thereby recontextualizing the accessibility of the instrument.

Prepared Guitar Ensemble practicing at Creativity Explored  II

Our performance at the Lab is the first time Creativity Explored artists have had a chance to rehearse and perform this work live since the inception of the project due to pandemic circumstances. We welcome guitar improvisers of all abilities to join us for our workshop / performance (RSVP at Mrobidouxm [at] gmail [dot] com at least one day prior to the event as spaces are limited), which will take place from 12:30-4 on Saturday, December 9. The performance will start at 3 PM.

These proceedings will be co-facilitated by pioneering electric guitarist and improviser, song-writer, and composer for film, dance and theater Fred Frith.