The project
“Feeling that the present moment is charged with exceptional intensity, and that conditions are ripe for what Indian tradition calls sphota, the “flash” that bursts forth from the right sound, the right gesture, the right gaze, the right exchange.”
[Peter Brook in Boredom is the Devil, 1989]
Sphota is a cooperative focused on musical invention, founded in 2000. We advocate musical creation that is firmly anchored in the present, informed by today’s technologies and aesthetics, while drawing on long experience with the classical repertoire. The projects we pursue defy conventional aesthetic categories.
Sphota offers a shared framework for the production, administration and promotion of distinct entities: composers and improvisers Benjamin de la Fuente and Samuel Sighicelli, as well as the group Caravaggio.
Yet beyond this, Sphota champions an approach to musical creation that emphasizes liveness and experimentation, alongside careful consideration of its audience’s listening capacities.
In years to come, we will welcome new entities into the cooperative while continuing to work regularly with a range of artists and technicians on an individual basis for each of our members’ projects.
Sphota develops and promotes musical works created for the stage, site-specific locations, and dedicated listening formats, always placing musicians – and their connection to the listener – at the heart of the experience.
Sphota also regularly engages in ambitious education and outreach projects.
The manifest
• As a cooperative, Sphota values the principle of sharing, both on a material and administrative level, as well as in terms of artistic and strategic considerations.
• Sphota champions musical invention that explores liveness and listening, through the combined strengths of improvisation and composition.
• Sphota favors transdisciplinary practices with a dedicated listening context specific to each core musical intention. The original impetus lies in sound.
• Sphota is committed to disseminating skills that expand classical training to reflect a more contemporary way of listening.
• For Sphota, music – no matter how unusual it may sound to the listener – is meant to take shape in the social space. This implies sustained reflection on forms of public representation, as well as pursuing education and outreach.
