Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Ingebritsen.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I started in music and departed from there though I have never stopped thinking of myself as a music maker. I just love sound. And music was always the main vehicle for my curiosity. I started with classical piano, went to percussion and drums, picked up the bass and started a few bands in Minneapolis, then became obsessed with modernist classical composers, especially those severe figures from Eastern Europe such as Penderecki and Ligeti for the rich variation of sonority and timbre they explored. This obsession with sonority led me to dabble in electronics which led me to dabble in the science of sound. Being a doer, I became a sound engineer so I could create the worlds I wanted these sonorities to live in and slowly adopted this as a profession. This further led to a career as an engineer which gifted me with the opportunity to be an integral part of Chicago ensembles such as International Contemporary Ensemble, eighth blackbird, Del Niente, Third Coast Percussion, and Spektral quartet, working alongside musicians that I would have otherwise had not business sharing a stage or a set with and working with composers that I had idolized as a young student of composition. The experience I gained as an engineer further led to a deep listening practice; tangentially influenced and always inspired by composers such as Pauline Oliveros and John Luther Adams. It also gave me the chops and insight to become a fully versed electronic and interactive performer using the tools I had at my fingertips and ears to work fluidly across genres. I now work with dancers to create body controlled sound (with lots of help from very talented and generous programmers), musicians to create interactive compositions that rely on the musician to play a virtual meta instrument, and painters who use the sound of their own contact with the canvas or other materials to inspire and motivate their artistic creations in real time. I am an interactive performer, composer, and sound artist.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It is a strange time to ask this question, or perhaps I should say, it is worded in a tense that I hope to use at some point in the future. Or perhaps not? I feel I am at a crucial crossroads in the process of developing the craft and art I wish to bring into the world. For a long time, I was using the skills I had picked up over the years to build. Build ensembles, build a community, build relationships, and build a practice. But the longer I have done this, the more I have found it easy to lose focus with my original artistic intent. This of course comes with the territory of being a good collaborator. One must be willing to open themselves to new ideas and approaches as every new partner will bring something different and it would be a loss not to learn from these perspectives. However, one must also keep some sense of one’s artistic identity among all of this and to do so one must have a clear vision and the means to express that vision to others or help them see what the vision is. As a mostly self-taught practitioner of technologies and performance practices that were developed through a series of trial and error experiments and jam sessions, it is hard to teach someone how to see/hear/feel what is being communicated.
So at this moment, I am going through what I hope will be a fruitful growing pain in that I am trying to teach myself how to teach what it is I am looking for when I am performing an electronic instrument. Not to limit the creative possibilities of my collaborators by any means, but to give them the fundamental pedagogical tools to develop their own relationship with the instruments I have built.
Working with technologies that require resources is always a struggle. And this kind of work requires long relationships which can also be a struggle. But each of these struggles has produced sweet fruit. I am currently working on my PhD for which my focus is codifying my practice into a written document and series of practices to go along with my works with the intent of communicating this vision better and defining my work to the world and to myself. So the struggle continues. And perhaps always will. As long as I am enjoying the process.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Ryan Ingebritsen – what should we know?
I don’t think of what I do as a business. I am a composer, performer, and sound artist. I hope one day we get over this fad of seeing everything as a business. I see it as a lifestyle and a mission. Of course, I have to make money to support it and that is I guess what makes each individual and their ideas seem a business. But the voice I have is my own and not that of a separated and abstracted entity.
I am proud of everything I have accomplished in life. Especially the people I have met and collaborated with. I am especially grateful for the friendships that have emerged from these practices. I think the community I can rely on for creative inspiration is what I am most proud of.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Mostly my wife Shannon Budd. She supports, proof reads, listens (to both projects I am working on and my many rants) and holds down the fort while I go away for sometimes weeks at a time. And she was my first collaborator having premiered my first solo interactive work “Reparametrization 1” for Flute.
Aside from that, pretty much everyone I have ever collaborated with over the years who are too numerous to name. Some primary collaborators have been Choreographer Ginger Farley, Polish interactive composer and my mentor Marek Choloniewski with whom I have collaborated with and been invited by many times over the years, Charles Waters and Andrew Barker from Gold Sparkle (New York based free jazz trio) with whom I have had the chance to experiment with over the course of the past 15 years, Lou Mallozzi and Experimental Sound Studio who have been avid supporters of my work since I arrived in Chicago in 2002, my close collaborator Erica Dicker, and then of course there are all the people in eighth blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, Spektral Quartet, Del Niente, Anaphora, MAVerick ensemble, Access Contemporary Music, and my old friends Claire Chase and Josh Rubin who had the tenacity to start International Contemporary Ensemble giving me some of my first experiences as both a composer and sound engineer.
I also need to give a huge amount of credit to my main collaborator for the last 8 years Erica Mott with whom I have worked on 4 different major dance and music projects, each of which resulted in several iterations and some of which were actually in different “parts” or “trilogies”. Together we developed a very successful interdependent artistic practice that has brought together so many different artists, scientists, programmers, builders, and devisers from across disciplines. Through this collaboration, I have learned so much about my practice and we have taken our work around the world.
Contact Info:
- Address: 5037 N Damen Ave #1
Chicago, IL 60625 - Website: ryaningebritsen.com
- Phone: 773 505 4960
- Email: waldtiere@gmail.com
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