While theorizing social formation in music rehearsals (McIntosh 2018), it is tempting to overlook imperfect musical sounds as by-products. Relatedly, a model that casts conviviality as in tension with musical goals in community music (Dubois 2018) does not capture the nuances of sound and sociality intertwined. This paper suggests that the work of attachment and intimacy also happens through the mundane experience of musical foibles in rehearsal. Mistakes may spur moments of conviviality through facial expressions, jokes, and laughter, while praise may be met with humble silence – responses that parallel idealized social interactions within the community. Through playing several decades with a Filipino American rondalla (plucked string ensemble), I have come to experience the sounds of unreliable intonation, wayward fingerings, and mistimed rhythms as contouring an aesthetics of intimacy (Berlant 1998). Flaws tell the story of poorly constructed or failing instruments, as well as highlight inexperience and inattention. They accompany the excitement of new pieces, sight-reading challenges, and fatigue, and therefore cannot be subsumed under a single category of undesirable sounds. Not incidentally, in this intergenerational group, it is often elders with the least musical experience making the most mistakes. These accidental soundings may initiate a temporary role inversion between teenagers and their parents that Tan describes as a kind of equality in his democratic model for instrumental practice (2014). While it is arguable whether mistakes are the point of rehearsal, I show how familiarity with sounded imperfections can build intimacy and strengthen a sense of community.

This paper examines how instrumental timbre and idealized sound is significant for the hierarchical position of instruments in Korean chamber music and how roles play out in the cultural field of rehearsals (Bourdieu 1993). The unique timbre of Korean musical instruments is understood by those who perform canonized repertoires as definitive of aesthetics and musical style (Lee 1997). In addition, timbre serves as a marker of difference between instruments and also embodiment in sound (Vélez 2018). I focus on the case study of Chǒngaktan, a professional court music ensemble in Seoul that has been important in transmitting Korean aristocratic and banquet music. In Korean chamber music where a full set of instrumentation is required, string instruments such as kayagǔm and kǒmun’go tend to take rhythmic roles, whereas wind instruments such as haegǔm, p’iri, and taegǔm adopt main melodies. Wind instruments timbres then become associated with prominent musical lines. Likewise, instrument power projects onto leadership roles of musicians in rehearsals. Accomplished musicians join state-sponsored ensembles that serve as models of professionalism and monopolize the legacy of knowledge and authority (Jeon 2023). How does the conceptualization of professionalism in modern society relate to the idea of musicians who prioritize wind instruments in court music in the 21st century? Through participant observation as a p’iri player in ensemble rehearsals and interviews with musicians at the National Gugak Center, I analyze how wind instruments rose to the top of hierarchy and how these dynamics in rehearsal impact the tradition of chamber music.

Disabled taiko ensembles have been active for over half of the history of kumi-daiko, or group drumming, and is a popular activity in welfare associations for the intellectually and developmentally disabled (IDD) throughout Japan. Taiko has received thorough scholarly treatment in its exploration of race and gender (Wong; Ahlgren; Bender; Yoon), but disability has not been examined outside of music therapy and education. The role of women has been the subject of much discourse within the transnational taiko community, where women make up the majority of members but lack representation in leadership roles. IDD taiko ensembles almost always feature women in positions of authority due to their prevalence in care work. Nondisabled women generally participate as music therapists, caregivers, or simply taiko instructors interested in working with disabled musicians. By utilizing Bourdieu’s (1993) concept of cultural fields and Kittay’s (2011) work on the ethics of care and interdependence, I examine how traditional positions and relationships in both taiko and care work are reconfigured within rehearsal spaces in Japan and the US. While the disabled taiko players are ostensibly presented as the lead musicians in performances, observing rehearsals unveils a more complex negotiation of power dynamics between the disabled musicians and their nondisabled caregivers who often perform with them. Rehearsal constitutes a process through which these performers must depend on each other while alternating roles and shifting textures as they produce sounds together. The oscillation of musical roles throughout taiko rehearsals constructs a space for reclaiming agency through interdependent relationships.

Scholarship on improvisation often likens successful performance dynamics to a conversation (Monson 1996:81-82). In musical practices that feature structured approaches to improvisation, rehearsals play an important role in cultivating successful conversations by grounding musicians’ creative decisions within shared idiomatic frameworks and repertoires. In improvisatory contexts that lack pre-arranged structural elements or common idiomatic norms, rehearsals can serve as a means of fostering productive interactive dynamics that can be later drawn upon in performances (Borgo 2005:9). Yet the manner by which such dynamics become cultivated can vary to a considerable degree based on group-specific factors ranging from internal power dynamics to differing approaches to embodied communication. In this presentation, I analyze divergent rehearsal approaches and creative philosophies in three free improvisation ensembles based in São Paulo, Brazil. The paper first examines the University of São Paulo’s free improvisation ensemble Orquestra Errante (Wandering Orchestra), led by saxophonist and scholar of free improvisation Rogério Costa. It then discusses the approach taken by the São Paulo Impro Orquestra (SPIO), whose leader famously conducts the group with a chef’s knife. Finally, I address an informal free improvisation trio in the city’s DIY experimental scene led by guitarist Natália Franscischini, vocalist Inés Terra, and electronic musician Bella. These groups’ three contrasting approaches, I argue, show how rehearsal in free improvisation can serve as a process for absorbing and inculcating an ethos of interpersonal interaction informed by an ensemble’s idealized social-institutional hierarchy.