STORY BY
PAIGE BURLESON

PHOTOS BY
NICOLE RODRIGUEZ

DESIGN BY
ELISE OTT

Strange, delightful music filled the air. Every type of instrument was scattered in a room in Moody Music Hall. With a quick gesture from Dr. Andrew Dewar, the music halted, and he sat on a bench to start the interview. Meanwhile, the lingering sounds drifted in and out of the room.

experimental1“Experimental music pushes the boundaries of the music we know,” Dewar said.

Dewar partnered with the Honors College, which helped support the UA Percussion Ensemble and Jazz Orchestra that performed Anthony Braxton compositions on February 19th for the Sonic Frontiers Concert Series. Experimental music, featured at the concert series that Dewar started, is not new to the world but it is new to many. Dewar, assistant director of Creative Campus and an interdisciplinary arts professor in New College and the School of Music, feels experimental music is about people who are trying to expand the limits of whatever music they are working on.

“Experimental musicians can be people like Anthony Braxton, famous saxophonist and composer, or John Cage, famous experimental composer. But for me, someone like Jimi Hendrix also comes to mind,” Dewar said. “He was a pop star but really pushed the boundaries of music.”

Holland Hopson, managing director for the Sonic Frontiers Concert Series and New College instructor, offers another definition for experimental music: music that exists outside of current conventions.

experimental4“This allows ancient music to be just as experimental as contemporary music,” Hopson said. “It also means unfashionable music might be heard as experimental, or that today’s conventional music could be considered experimental at an earlier or later time.”

Dewar’s prediction for the future of experimental music is that it will always be a marginal music, never commercial.

“It will be a niche market kind of thing, but there are lots of examples of experimental music influencing mainstream.” Dewar said.

Dewar provided the example of the album cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. The cover features a collage of different faces, and one is that of famous experimental music composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen. The Beatles were big fans of his work, especially what he was doing with electronics.

“The thing with experimental music is that it’s often work that is outside of the box, trying new ideas and testing boundaries to see what can happen,” Dewar said. “It can start out as an experiment but can turn into something commercial, like a Beatles record.”

Dewar believes experimental music is important because people are exploring new possibilities and new ways of putting information together. Hopson thinks that audiences today have more expansive and curious musical tastes than in earlier eras thanks to the availability of more recorded music.

“We shouldn’t want music to be the same forever,” Dewar said. “We want people to keep exploring and to figure out new ways to put sounds together.”

Experimental music can take the form of any instrument. Hopson mostly performs on banjo and live electronics.

“Sometimes the idea of the music seems to be inside the instrument, so learning a new instrument introduces me to new ideas,” Hopson said.

Dewar began playing in punk and noise bands as a teenager. He then dove into jazz because it was more aligned with his personal tastes. He got into experimental jazz, which led to experimental music in all aspects.

“I fell in love with the soprano saxophone by hearing it from one of my teachers Steve Lacy, who was one of the most famous soprano players ever,” Dewar said. “I loved hearing his music and Sidney Bechet, who is a famous jazz soprano saxophonist.”

Shortly after arriving in Tuscaloosa in 2008, Dewar started the Sonic Frontiers Concert Series.

“A part of making Tuscaloosa home was starting the concert series,” Dewar said. “I wanted to be somewhere where this kind of music was happening. I started the concert series partly for selfish reason because I wanted this kind of music happening here and partly because I thought people were hungry for it, and it turns out that they are.”experimental3

The hunger is real. Elise Ott, Mosaic designer and UA sophomore majoring in advertising and art, listened in on a rehearsal for the concert series.

“Experimental music was like a whole new language,” Ott said. “It was sort of like watching people translate music from another language that doesn’t actually exist and surprisingly, it all flowed together really nicely.”

Ott played the piano for nine years and has done concert photography for various bands. She is enamored with concerts of any kind and enjoys discovering new music. Her first time listening to experimental music sparked a realization about the genre.

 “It allows music to go places music doesn’t normally go,” Ott said. “It creates a new sense of freedom for music that can let new and interesting things happen.”

Dewar made experimental music one of his professions because it’s a never-ending process.

“The only good idea is the next idea,” Dewar said. “There is always something else to make it better. It’s the thing I love and hate about it: I can’t say that I’ve reached the top and that I’m done. It’s like Sisyphus. I climb up, fall down a little, but I keep on climbing up.”

“Experimental music was like a whole new language,” Ott said. “It was sort of like watching people translate music from another language that doesn’t actually exist and surprisingly, it all flowed together really nicely.”

Ott played the piano for nine years and has done concert photography for various bands. She is enamored with concerts of any kind and enjoys discovering new music. Her first time listening to experimental music sparked a realization about the genre.

 “It allows music to go places music doesn’t normally go,” Ott said. “It creates a new sense of freedom for music that can let new and interesting things happen.”

Dewar made experimental music one of his professions because it’s a never-ending process.

“The only good idea is the next idea,” Dewar said. “There is always something else to make it better. It’s the thing I love and hate about it: I can’t say that I’ve reached the top and that I’m done. It’s like Sisyphus. I climb up, fall down a little, but I keep on climbing up.” experiemtnal2 

The Sonic Frontiers Concert Series takes place every year, always featuring new artists and free of charge. While the Braxton events have already passed, there will be one more Series event this season on April 12 featuring Trevor Watts, a British saxophonist and Veryan Weston, a British pianist. They are legendary, first-generation experimental jazz musicians.

Dewar explained that since experimental music is community driven, it is full of learning experiences with diverse people.

“Experimental music is full of people who do it because they love it and think it is important,” Dewar said. “For me, it is very immediate music, in the moment music.”