Rebecca Novak

Improviser and artist Rebecca Novak works with a shifting constellation of instruments and objects - cornet, piano, shortwave radio, glass vases - honing fine-grained textures and seemingly electronic- or mechanical-sounding noise, opening a multifaceted landscape of sound. 

Interrogating the liminal spaces between sound, vision and language, my work often combines music with sculpture, live writing, or projected image to investigate the complex relationships between environment & self;  performance & being; body & object; the political & the philosophical. Called Annotations, these group-navigated improvisations refer both to a way of "annotating" or translating an experience or idea across practices, and an absence of traditional notation.

Sculpture / Score, February 2020

Events

Sounds

Draw a picture of your ideal landscape (2023),  Annotation 3.5.4.5 - Listen here

Megan Easely (hydrophone, water, vessels / objects, shruti box ), Danny Kamins (alto saxophone, sopranino saxophone), Rebecca Novak (electric piano, piano, glass vases / feedback, radio, cornet, objects) 

Groundwater recharge (2021) -  Listen here  

Jerome Bryerton (percussion), Sandy Ewen (guitar), Danny Kamins (baritone saxophone), Rebecca Novak (cornet, piano, radio, glassware), Damon Smith (double bass) 

Garden medium (2016) Listen here  

Sandy Ewen (guitar and objects), Rebecca Novak (autoharp, cornet, shortwave radio, objects), Carol Sandin Cooley (electronics, voice) 

Pilot (2018) Listen here 

Steve Jansen (tapes, electronics, alto saxophone), Rebecca Novak (autoharp, cornet, shortwave radio, objects) 

Animating light in lieu of moving images, this audiovisual duo disrupts the illusionary function of a 16 mm film projector by transforming fluid waveforms of light into sound, while back-translating audible vibrations into patterns of light - both informing and confounding the reality of each. The duo's material vocabulary transfigures simple binary parameters: on/off, light/dark, sound/silence are expanded through a gradient spectrum of fine-grained tonal shifts, articulated mechanical noise and subtle feedback of acoustic waveforms. Inspired by Yvonne Rainer’s Hand Movie and Homemade, Trisha Brown’s historic projected dance performance, Woods’ hand and objects become gestural surfaces redirecting the light back into the the sound head of the projector, reading its flickers like a sound-generating score while dispersing the remaining light in an iridescent shadow-dance. Novak’s malleable utterances dovetail, juxtapose and collide with Woods’ projectors-as-instruments in a ceaseless coaxing of pattern and form.

Projects / Scores / Performances

Annotation 3.5.4.5 - FLOW: A Geological Time Play in 4.5 million Radical Acts of Community - Gulf Coast Anthropocene (Round 52), Project Row Houses (2021) - A crowd-sourced play was written by community members over the course of the exhibit. This work included sculpture, drawings, projection, and sound installation of a duo with Anders Zelinski (percussion) and myself (electric piano). During the exhibition a trio was also recorded with Megan Easely (hydrophone, water, vessels / objects, shruti box), Danny Kamins (sopranino and alto saxophones), and myself (electric piano, piano, glass vases/feedback, cornet, objects).  A 4-color risograph book of the community-authored text is currently in progress. 

Annotation 2.5 - Lawndale Arts Center (2018) Ronnie Yates (poetry), Anders Zelinski (percussion), Sonia Flores (double bass), Rebecca Novak (cornet, melodica, shortwave radio)

Six times, for 1-6 performers (2017) Play this morning / Play as if last week has not yet occurred / Play the future backwards / Play ahead of time / Play a version of yesterday / Play only this moment


George Brecht, Ladder (anti-hierarchical intervention), 2018

Brecht’s score instructs for a wooden ladder to be painted by making the outside rails white and bottom rung black, followed by the colors of the spectrum, and the top rung white. The score was intentionally altered, installing the work upside-down and propped against a window.


PerFormative Poiesis: A Timed Play in Three Acts (2015) Actor becomes playwright, philosopher becomes actor, musician improvises dialogue in a timed improvisational play. With Berenice Suchilt, S. Rodriguez, Ronnie Yates, Steve Jansen, Randi Long and Rebecca Novak.

Listen Around Your Way - DiverseWorks Houston (2017) An hour-long structured improvisation visually and sonically mapped the breezeway of Midtown Arts and Theater Center.

Harmonic Cycle - Project Row Houses (2009) Blocks of ice melted into a watering can, prompting attention to a row of plants growing on a porch.  A sundial made from prisms taped to the windows traced a collective history of community through a daily arcing of rainbows across the walls and chimney of the space.

Third Ward ecological study center (Communograph) - Project Row Houses (2011) 35mm slide installation and archive of parks, yards, gardens and green spaces in Third Ward, Houston. This work also included a "sidewalk talk" series, with discussions on walkable neighborhoods, creative use of green spaces, and exercise in the workplace.