Ten Questions, An Interview With Forbes Graham - Below is an interview conducted on 6/6/24 by Mobius Artists Group intern Tara Guzman-Finn with Mobius Artists Group member and co-director Forbes Graham. Interview edited for clarity with Forbes Graham’s permission. - Forbes Graham (b. 1977) is a composer, musician, sound artist, and visual artist whose work explores themes of simultaneity, perceptibility, transformation and collage. He was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Silver Spring, MD. He attended American University, studying music composition, in the mid to late 90s and was involved in the DC and Maryland hardcore scenes, playing in a number of bands and releasing music on his label RiceControl. In the early 2000s, he moved to New England, where he got involved with Boston's free jazz and improvised music scenes. Graham has appeared on over 40 albums, primarily on trumpet, but also on electronics. He is a member of Mobius Artists Group, a collective of experimenting artists. Past composition teachers include Chaya Czernowin, Eric Wubbels and Julia Werntz. www.mobius.org/mobius-artists ____________________________________________________________________________ Forbes Graham: Howdy Tara Guzman-Finn: Hi Forbes… Question 1: How did you come to be a Mobius Artists Group member? What did that journey look like for you? FG: Sure. So, I was invited to give a Spider Web talk, it was in the fall of 2021. I was in communication with some of the members, in particular Jimena [Bermejo]. They invited me to join around January of 2022. And you know, the whole process of becoming a member is, is somewhat opaque and not entirely formalized… So I didn't know that they had been considering me as a member until they asked me, once they asked me, I said, well, yeah, of course. I did have some history with Mobius members. I've worked with Jane Wang, Tom Plsek, Jed Speare. I’ve known Max Lord for a while. He's not a member [now], but his partner, Ellen [Godena (co-director of Mobius at the time)], is a member. So, you know, I've had some tangential history that goes back quite a ways as well. Question 2: So you have formal training in trumpet, studying at American University in Washington D.C. in music composition. You were in D.C., in hardcore bands, and then you came to Boston and did jazz. What has that journey been like, transferring from a more academic training to experimental music? FG: I think it's been organic. You know, I was familiar with certain types of experimental music since high school, sort of related to my involvement in metal, hardcore, and free jazz. Although I started [by] doing concert music. American University was not a particularly adventurous school, but they did have [a] 20th century [music course], which would have been, at that point, probably the music [of] the forties and fifties. So that's how I heard of Messiaen, Olivier Messiaen, and Penderecki and some things like that. At the A.U. music library, I would listen to as much Messiaen, Stockhausen, and various things like Coltrane that I could get my hands on. I was doing orchestra and I was studying composition. But, you know, I was running this parallel track [in my listening]. Once I graduated college, I was playing in this progressive metal band [but] I was getting bored of music in D.C. My friend Frankie told me to go up to Baltimore and go to [a] place called the Red Room. And that's where they [had] free improvising music. So I kinda got hip to that. I moved to Providence first and [then] I really started to work with people in Boston. it's sort of a serendipitous story of how I got involved in [the] free jazz scene. The short version is that I decided to go to Cambridge for a concert instead of going to the thing in Providence that everybody else was going to. And that's where I met this guy Raqib Hassan who's passed away. But he was doing a Sun Ra memorial concert. And so I met him and I started playing with him and I met a lot of people through him and from there, it just kind of ballooned because of the network effect of, you know, you meet this person, you play with this person and so on. Question 3: I'm going to intertwine two questions: What draws you to performing arts and what drew you to sound specifically? FG: Hm. I don't think that anything really does draw me to performing arts. I mean, performing is okay. I think a lot of times, leading up to a performance, I am not looking forward to it, I'm fairly anxious and I'm, like, why am I doing this? And then, when it's actually happening, I'm, like, this is great! I'm having a good time! Everything is good, or, everything's OK, and so on. I am not really someone, overall, who wants attention. I mean, I guess there's a weird interplay of, maybe, I would like some credit or something. But overall, I'm not super into attention and I don't feel the need to [be] in front of people. I'm not actually interested in that at all, in and of itself. I mean, I like people to see things and I like to get money, but [the performing] part doesn't appeal necessarily. When you create work, then you have to perform it. And I think I'm more interested in creating and producing and coming up with ideas. The quote unquote “natural outgrowth” of that is where you have to share it somehow. So that [second] part, [sound design, is what] I'm more interested in. I think I was always interested in just seeing what I could do by myself. As the technology [has] sort of democratized and gotten cheaper, it's been easier to do that. So in undergrad, we had a synth lab. I took sound synthesis, and we had a large console Moog, an Oberheim Matrix 6, [a] Yamaha DX7, and several other synthesizers, you know, these big [things] from the seventies and eighties that cost thousands of dollars. As time is going on, people develop various software synths and then there are programs like Max/MSP, Pure Data and others where you can really kind of see sound, you can kind of create your own sound synthesis environments. It makes it a lot easier [to] stretch the mind, [to] stretch the imagination. You know, I’ve just been interested in going where the sound is. What sound do I mean? There's this stuff that's interesting to me, like, if you took a shovel, or, not a shovel, like a snow shovel - you take a snow shovel and you scrape it on the asphalt. I like that. I think that's interesting, for whatever reason. That's cool to me.I don't like jackhammers, because I think about the fact that the person doing the jackhammering is really hurting themselves. So that doesn't appeal to me so much. But, you know, there's a variety of sounds either that we encounter in the environment or we can create. And they all appeal to me. I like tapping out rhythms in five and seven all the time, just randomly, and stuff. So, you know, I just wanna be there, wherever that is, and whatever that means. Sometimes it beats the rest of this stuff. Question 4: You kind of touched on this but one of the questions I was prompted to ask was how do you construct/compose scores? FG: It really depends, it used to be a lot more formalized and involved a lot of math and all kinds of things and every now and then I'll dip back into that. I've done various talks on it. These days it tends to be more informal. I did a performance just last Sunday and I basically took a piece of paper, separated it into four sections and then did a kind of drawing on it. Then [I] kind of created [the score] in what's called Reaper DAW [(Digital Audio Workstation)]. I realized [the composition] with various synths, creating these little snippets in other programs and then kind of launching it all into this thing. But there's a variety of tools, tricks, and techniques that I've accumulated over the years. Some of which relate to, you know, having an initial theme and then changing it in some way, some of which are based on analyzing the theme. Sometimes I write little computer programs that will give me certain pitches and transform them in certain ways. I actually wrote a piece for cello recently where I had a whole matrix of pitches that I would look at. And then I also wrote these chords. And so I would hop back and forth between the pitches and the chords. And the process of hopping back and forth was intuitive. But creating that list of pitches was a computer program I wrote, and then I think the chords I just kind of was like, oh, that one follows that one and so on. So it's a mix of these somewhat deliberative things and then just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what feels good and stuff like that. Question 5: What are some of your best shows or compositions that you think you've done? FG: Mmm, So I did a piece for this group called loadbang. They’re this bass clarinet, trombone, trumpet, and voice [group], [and the piece was] called “For Sam Gilliam I”. I really liked how that turned out and there are some parts that had more of a graphic notation. There's one part that has these boxes and then there was another part where I had [left] all the notes but then I took out, the staff, and took out everything that would help you really , know what the notes are supposed to be, and then mushed them all together. They did it differently than I would have done it or what I had in my mind because I didn't provide any other instructions, but they did it very, very well. That was a really lovely performance. The guy I studied with for a little bit, this guy, Eric Wubbles, I played on one of his pieces in New York and that was pretty amazing. I was like, wow, I can't believe I'm here doing this. A nice thing about what, what I do, is that I have those moments probably three or four times a year, where I'm just like, wow, I get to do this, you know, I can't believe it. I played in Worcester on New Year's Day. This thing called Noise Brunch, [at] this place, The Firehouse. And I got a message from somebody who said they had depression and all these different things and they caught half of my performance and while they were there, they felt healed, at least temporarily. While I don't aim to do that, that was probably one of the best messages I've ever gotten. Like, that was one of the best gifts that I could have ever received as a person. Question 6: So performance art is very outward facing, you're obviously interacting with the audience, whether it's physically or cognitively. And very similarly [with] sound you're going to interact with your audience because they are listeners. You mentioned that you mostly do sound design for yourself, but do you ever think about your audience prior to, or during the creation process? FG: Yes, I absolutely do. My teacher in undergrad, his name was Kevin Collar and what he taught me was: listener, composer, performer. That's the trifecta. So you keep all of them in balance and all in mind, and there's no need to necessarily spell that out any further. The great dilemma with that is to what extent might you censor yourself for the sake of a performance, or a listener. But you do, in my opinion, have to engage with the intention of understanding who these parties are and then acting accordingly when you're creating work. Now, there are times when you can make choices to deliberately confound that relationship for the sake of another kind of ideal or choice related to it. So, maybe you have something where for whatever reason, for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, the same thing happens. That's not necessarily a listener friendly choice, but then at the end of the 20 minutes, something happens that made it all worth it. But yes, I definitely at least keep these elements in mind when I'm working. Question 7: Can you choose one or two turns or inflection points in your life as an artist that made you become who you are today? FG: Hmm, well let me engage with it literally and then interpret. I'm not so sure that there's too much in my art that has made me the person I am. Well, I take that back now that I think about it. Ok. So if we were gonna talk about quote “the person I am” I was in a band whose name, I will not name, for three years and anybody who knows me will know what I'm talking about. And there were certain things that were very frustrating about that experience and I ended up quitting that band. And one of the things I realized at some point was that there were aspects of that, while there was nobody who did anything especially bad, there was nothing like that, but there were things about being in that situation that traumatized me and made me a more uptight and wound-up and anxious individual, just more obnoxious to deal with as a person. And so I had to kind of undo a lot of that for a while. So that was an artistic inflection point that actually did affect my life in some areas, some areas positively, but in some areas negatively. But in terms of the artistic side of life. When I moved to Providence and I went to that show I was telling you about and I met Raqib. That was very much an inflection point because through Raqib, I met almost everybody else who I played with for the next, gosh, like 10-15 years. And I'm sure that at some point something would have happened, but had that not happened, it was just different and he even helped me get housing. I originally wanted to be an electrical engineer or some kind of engineer. I played music, but I didn't necessarily want to be a musician. And I discovered this kind of progressive metal band called Atheist. And that was the band that made me want to be a musician, when I heard their music, I said, nah, you know, engineering is out, music is in, so that was certainly a[n inflection] point. And then in high school, I was playing jazz combo stuff on the side with some friends, and we were also listening to Ornette Coleman and John Zorn and Cecil Taylor and stuff. So, you know, it's definitely been some of these [moments], but I think the biggest one probably would be meeting Raqib in 2003. Question 8: Recently I saw your One Minute Solo, a show of one minute performances pieces directed by Jimena [Bermejo, former co-director of Mobius]. You built a toy train track and then you performed a very short trumpet solo in the middle of it. Can you talk to me a little bit about that piece? FG: So it was about parenting. It was a parent trap. I've got various toys around because I have three kids. And so the idea was really that juxtaposition of your domestic life as a parent and your artistic life. So that was why I went out there and built the track and then played. And the other thing was I built it around myself. So I put myself in it, which was the other point was to contain myself within the track, which was somewhat symbolizing the constraint. By the way, I'm not complaining about being a parent, I don't want it to be construed as that. I think when you're in any kind of thing, where you deal with others, then you have to kind of set certain parts of yourself aside in some way, in order to be, to serve the other interests, whether that's a relationship with another adult, or being involved in a community or a group or being a parent. So, that piece was just about juggling all of that stuff. I was mainly trying to make sure I played okay. Question 9: Could you talk a little bit about simultaneity, perceptibility, and transformation? FG: Sure. So with music, we have homophonic music and polyphonic music and there's something called counterpoint. So, if you have one thing that's happening, you know (Forbes begins snapping up and down) then that's the one thing. But then (Forbes also snaps with his other hand, left and right), you know, the there's two. I can't really do three things right now. But those things all kind of go together and they get perceived in different ways and when you have like two musical voices at once, they create a certain effect and so on. So there's sort of the traditional approaches, thinking of harmony and counterpoint and so on, that are interesting, and then there's just like everything else that maybe isn't in quote unquote “the traditional sphere” but is also, in its own way, really interesting. So there was a guy named Jarrod Fowler, who I used to hang out with a lot and he did this thing where he would have all these different voices going at once. He'd read something and he'd have just like eight tracks all going in or however many, I never asked him. But, you know, these multiple tracks of things, so you couldn't understand anything that was actually being said. But what would happen is, you would pick out certain things that you wouldn't normally notice, and especially with speech, when you have a lot of speech like that going, the thing that comes out a lot of time is what they call the sibilants. So all the sss stuff, and it makes a stronger impression because of the fact that you can't necessarily hear the actual words or understand them. So that's an example of that transformation ain't even a collage. You know you take all of these different things and you throw them together and now you got something new and in that something new, maybe there's something different that emerges that you see that you wouldn't have seen if you were just looking at these different things [separately]. Or maybe not. Maybe, really, you just cover everything up [to] you know, bury everything. You know, kind of, “I wanna express myself but in a private manner”. [Or maybe] “I'll just take all of the information and make it hard to understand”. So that's the other thing about perceptibility, there's different types of ways of thinking about that. I mean, one is like if you have something really quiet, then how do you perceive it [differently]. Or if you change the frequency, so that something that maybe had a certain frequency band now has a different one; you hear it in a different way or perceive it in a different way. If you do a lot of those things, those are those operations that kind of reconfigure [a piece]. And then as an artist, it creates a certain set of challenges and problems, but also gives you a lot of templates to reconfigure and recreate. I don't know a lot about the philosophy stuff, [I’m] talking like postmodernist. Modernism is like, hey, we can actually do things in [the composition] and change stuff, and we can create great things and so on, which I partially subscribe to. Then [in] postmodernism, I guess is like, it's not easily ascertain what the heck is going on. The narratives that we construct [through sound], we can't necessarily claim them as true or whatever. [So] you go to Mcdonald's anywhere and it's still Mcdonald's. Or Starbucks or you go to the Marriott. You go do whatever it is, quote “that they do there”. But then, you know, maybe, take Montreal. You go to Montreal, you get poutine or whatever and then you go to the drum circle up on the top of the mountain and then you know, [that’s different]. So I'm kind of rambling. But the point is that contemporary life often is this series of collages and [this series of collages has] only continued to develop because of the internet. My son had a Spotify playlist and he's like “it's Brazilian funk”. I know exactly what that is because, I forget how I know, but I do know, and I was like, oh, cool. Funk music is influenced and derived and related to hip hop from Memphis, you know. So we have these [combinations that] maybe would have seemed bizarre - which probably aren't, really, cause culture is always cross pollinating - but, you know, maybe 50 years ago would have seemed absolutely absurd, and now they're just like what people do [and listen too] and that's part of that thinking around the collage. And the transformation is like, “Man, we can do anything!” Question 10: Do you have any upcoming plans for your own art and as co-director of Mobius? FG: Hm. I'm playing in New Haven in less than two weeks. So there's that and I'm always working on music that I'm putting out on band camp. I have a tape that I've been creating. It's like a collage tape: first I purchased this tape at a store an old cassette, that they used to load computer programs on. So I copied that tape onto another tape and then I've been copying other tapes onto that tape too. Some classical, some folk, some pop, like Johnny Mathis, just a random collection of stuff. My next step is to take the tape and run it through a bunch of effects and record some stuff off [that]. So that's something I've been doing. And I have at least a piece or two to get back to working on. I've got a thing with Serena [Gabriels] who's another member of Mobius. We're gonna do a performance. We haven't set the exact date, but we have another rehearsal coming [up]. [Update: Forbes Graham and Serena Gabriels performed on November 16th in the show MobiusLive! Series: Entanglements video and photo from the performance can be seen on the Mobius’ Instagram] In terms of co-directing, I need to be modest about what I'll achieve. But I'd like to be more efficient in my side of co-directing because I've definitely faced a number of challenges, like life challenges and mental health issues, and it's kind of slowed me down in terms of my effectiveness. So I wanna conquer that this year. Jeff [Huckleberry (co-director alongside Forbes)] and I work pretty well together because we kind of think fairly similarly around how to organize stuff. So it's just a matter of me dipping in and accomplishing more. It's a challenge because what do you wanna pick? What do you wanna prioritize? I think we have some good programming coming up and I'd just like to make sure that we can get that all done and executed and then also be a support for the members who want to do other things with our resources. ____________________________________________________________________________ More from Forbes Graham can be found at his website and patreon: https://www.forbesgrahammusic.com/ and https://www.patreon.com/forbesgraham If you would like to hear more about Forbes Graham and Mobius check out his video on the Spiderweb and Video Archive ( https://www.mobius.org/spiderweb-and-video-archive ) - a project devised during the pandemic, to nurture a sense of artist community, and connection, when we were not able to meet in person. photo credits: Forbes Graham, Reflections: A Sonic Laboratory, St. Augustine's Church in Cambridge, MA. by Anya Guyer. Forbes Graham via mobius.org Forbes Graham performing during “an archive and/or a repertoire” from Tufts University Art Galleries (fb)

Tonight at 8 pm EST‼️ Mobius founder Marilyn Arsem will give an online lecture on ‘Practice and Research of Durational Performance’ in Tokyo, Japan. The live lecture is on Monday, May 26, 2025, 9:00–11:30 JST, which translates to Sunday, May 25, 8 pm - 10:30 pm EST. Follow the links below to see the lecture live. The lecture can be viewed in person at the Community Salon, 3rd Floor, International Exchange Building, Tokyo University of the Arts, Ueno Campus, Tokyo, Japan. It will be presented in English with Japanese translation. A video of the lecture will later be available on the IPAMIA website. The event is a joint project between the Nagashima Laboratory at Global Arts, at Tokyo University and the Durational Performance Project Tokyo (DPPT) of the Independent Performance Art Moving Image Archive (IPAMIA). IPAMIA was established in 2016 and primarily functions as an archive of video documentation of performance art, but it also collects printed materials such as flyers and texts. Through its website and events, IPAMIA makes this information publicly accessible. https://ipamia.net/ As a practice-based project, DPPT (Durational Performance Project Tokyo) involves four artists who not only engage in durational performance as a form of artistic practice but also conduct research on it. The members of DPPT are Ishida Takahiro, Kitayama Seiko, Yamaoka Sakiko, and Yamazaki Chihiro. This event was organized by these four artists. To request the link for the lecture, please fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfGE4JOZjPHtT8u-ubDQXpM3ZlDWUHRD7kkkxTnCsi1ZdG1iA/viewform?usp=dialog For additional information please see: https://ga.geidai.ac.jp/en/2025/05/01/marilynarsem/ https://ipamia.net/en/marilyn-arsem-lecture/ (fb)