PROXIMITY COLLECTIVE seeks to eliminate barriers. This artist collective aims to redefine the landscape of accessibility to music education and performance by reducing the distance between assumption and truth, desire and accessibility, narrative and performer. Placing the utmost value in listening, performances and interactions will leave all involved with a deeper sense of empathy, connection, and understanding. And above all with a sense of possibility - permission to live inside one’s imagination and senses. Ultimately, the evolving relationships connected to  PROXIMITY COLLECTIVE nurture a generation of artists and audience members alike, to both feel their value and to amplify their voices while lessening any preconceptions or judgements.

Past collaborations :

For the cellist Rebecca Merblum, music has never been a standalone art. It was never just about playing for the audience, but about listening and experiencing people and things around you. For her, sound and listening have always had topography. Each is connected to experiences and relationships. And then the pandemic emerged, and Merblum’s relationship to performance and music drastically shifted. So began the “CELLO CONVERSATIONS.”

Over the span of a year, Merblum led evolving, virtual conversations with artist and landscape architect Rebecca Krinke, museum professional Lesley Kadish, and her cello.  The central question was: What happens when the audience is invited into the performance itself, inside the conversation? What happens if, instead of playing for the audience, Merblum were to have a direct, one-on-one conversation with a member of the public? What would we hear then?

This final conversation was the culmination of that year-long conversation. Moderated by poet Mwatabu Okantah, this event was part performance, part interactive experiment, part panel discussion, asking attendees to personally engage with presenters to explore the question: What do we hear?

Collaborators : Poet Mwatabu Okantah, Archaeologist Lesley Kadish, Landscape Artist Rebecca Krinke

Partnership : Weisman Museum 

THREADS was the weaving together of process, sound, story, and community. This Global Music Initiative Residency supported active engagement with prolific writer, Shannon Gibney, the students of Bancroft Elementary School, the compositional voices of Chad Hughes, James Lee III, and Adolphus Hailstork, and the visual art of indigenous muralist Moira Villiard. Each artist and student involved in this project represented an underserved community within the landscape of the country as well as the Twin Cities. The music and concept served as a catalyst to personify our inner relationships to sound - our threads. The threads were sculpted, written, and ultimately part of a student lead composition reflecting this process of finding connection. 

Collaborators : Writer Shannon Gibney, Composer Chad ‘Sir Wick’ Hughes, James Lee III, Aldophus Hailstork, Visual Artist Moira Villiard 

Partnership : Bancroft School

A non-linear path. To flow. Winding and weaving. The Mississippi River. MEANDER celebrated this motion. This land. This water. The harmonic language of Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, Anna Clyne, and others served as the soundscape for this exploration. Gestures wove through this collective compositional landscape like the river itself. Five locations along the river were home to this concert.

Colorful pathways, beautifully depicted by the cartography of Harold Fisk, served as inspiration for the visual component of this concert series. Robert Hodgin’s three dimensional living sculpture of the ‘meandering’ river accompanied the sounds - responding with color and motion to each frequency.

Lastly, when this is repeated in the future a concert program will instead take the form of a textile done by indigenous artists to depict the Ojibwa concept of the “misi-ziibi,” or Great River.

Weaving the worlds of poet Tarfia Faizullah and cellist/composer Rebecca Merblum, ‘SEAM.STRESS’ brought the listener inside the wordscapes of Faizullah’s ‘Seam.’ Each poem was given an accompanying soundscape. Amplifying the language, placing us within and around the unspoken. The language speaks to the deep acknowledgment of the female experience, to the plight of the planet, of global equity, and of the present day worlds in which we coexist. In an effort to nurture the concept of ‘turning towards’ as a means of fostering connection, acknowledgement and needed cultural shifts, one human being at a time.

Collaborator : Tarfia Faizullah

Current Collaborative Efforts with :

Eyenga Bokamba - info to follow!