Mixes from the Field offers a methodology and adaptable lesson series that supports a group of motivated participants in exploring their world through the medium of handheld recording technology, helping them translate what they hear and record into a digitally-shareable, compelling sonic work. Combinations of these sonic works might then be curated into soundwalks, added to a group soundmap, played at a community performance or used by the students themselves as part of their portfolios.
Teaching Artists and Co-Founders
I am in love with the noisy quiet of the sounding world around me: from the chorus of birds and bats at dawn and dusk in my backyard – to the resounding, hollow echoes of church hulls and museum halls – to the throb and roar of crowded citystreet corners. I am in love with how these vibrations penetrate my bodymind, leaving their traces, their tensions and releases. With the sound that I create in the studio or on stage, I seek a dialogue with the listener, searching for the right balance of stillness and shout in an attempt to give sonic and energetic space to the listener, for their thoughts, feelings, sensations, emptinesses. Each sonic creation is an act of deep respect for and communion with the ambient sounds around me, the beautiful world we live in, and the artists with whom I have the honour to collaborate.
I grew up in the United States and, after travelling some years through Jordan and France, finally landed in Arnhem, The Netherlands. I studied piano at the Utrecht School of the Arts, Faculty of Music, and later completed a Masters in Music Pedagogy at the Royal Conservatoire, the Hague, focusing on feminisms, improvisation and technology in a music pedagogical practice. In the course of this process, I discovered Deep Listening. After following three international retreats, I became certified in Deep Listening with Pauline Oliveros, IONE and Heloise Gold in 2011, and I am currently one of the core teachers for the online Deep Listening certificate program for the Center for Deep Listening, RPI.
I have the privilege to live in a city with a thriving dance academy, ArtEZ, and have become involved in various projects and performances with dancers, some ongoing. Using field recordings has become an integral part of my creation process. In 2016 I had the opportunity to learn from recordists and artists Jez riley French and Chris Watson at the 3-day Orford Ness Sound Recording Field Trip. Further, I have a private piano practice in Arnhem; have given multiple guest lectures and workshops at the department of Gender Studies at Utrecht University and NOI♀SE Summer School; and I currently serve as Associate Editor of the Journal of Sonic Studies.
In my work I strive for a dynamic relationshipwith the body, creating situations for myself and others in which participants can ‘make music’ while also remaining open to the particularly sense-ational information the body continually relays. Paying attention to dreams is a rich source for me in understanding my underlying and transform-ing/ational emotional states as well as providing a, sometimes astounding, source of raw materials. In my own creating and teaching I hold and return to balance, openness, stillness and spontaneity, while leaving space for the explosive, volatile and powerful forces of emotional expression.
You can find an overview of my projects on my LinkedIN profile, listen to some works on SoundCloud as well as read about Alice in Audiotenland, a dance project with CCCompass, on Sounds of Europe and read an article on Deep Listening by me for the Journal of Sonic Studies.
Michael Reiley is a composer and musician. He creates sonic worlds in the traditions of sound therapy, sacred music, and Deep Listening. His work explores the nexus of inner and outer soundscapes as a mode of transpersonal connection and oneness. Through this exploration spectrums of listening consciousness are illuminated including music for sleep, dreaming, meditation, therapy, movement, and focused states of attention/awareness. His music uses techniques and technologies such as drones, binaural beat frequencies, color therapy, data sonification, field recording, tape loops, sacred geometry, esoteric frequency ratios, alternate tuning systems, extended improvisations, sound healing instruments, and more traditional instruments like piano, hand pan, and synthesizer.
Recent projects include Echozoo, an archive of reimagined soundscapes of extinct animals and their habitats, and Celestial Music Box, a generative system that uses live star coordinate data to create sleep music.
Michael is a certified Deep Listening teacher and teaches at the Center for Deep Listening at Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute, and with his somatic listening workshops around the world called Listening Bodies.