music/Maker with Tyler Kline // Episode 51

Tinkering New Instruments and Sounds into Being with Rob Funkhouser

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On today's episode of music/Maker with Tyler Kline, Tyler is joined by composer, performer, installation artist, and educator Rob Funkhouser.

Based in Indianapolis, Rob Funkhouser builds instruments out of metal mixing bowls, copper pipe, plywood, glass rods, and whatever else is at hand — and then writes music for them. His work engages ideas of place, memory, and pattern, and interrogates assumptions embedded in both art music performance and music education. He is composer in residence and artistic director for Sound Ecologies, a resident artist with Big Car Collaborative, and teaches music technology at the Herron School of Art. His installation work has reached thousands of people through exhibitions at the Guichelaar Gallery, at Spark Monument Circle, and at Burning Man. Recent premieres span solo piano to symphony orchestra.

In this conversation, Rob and Tyler trace a path that begins with singing along to a vacuum cleaner, moves through a failed timpani audition at Indiana University, a philosophy detour, a depression, a chance encounter at a Starbucks in Richmond, Indiana, and six years running a percussion museum in the basement of a mall — and arrives at a practice where composing, building, performing, and community-making are all expressions of the same restless curiosity. They talk about what draws a composer to build instruments rather than synthesize sounds, how translation between formats and formats unlocks new musical ideas, why the blank page is the enemy and a music box is the cure, and what it means to make music that surprises people with simple things.

Listen to Rob’s music on his website, https://www.robfunkhouser.com/, and view his built instruments at https://www.robfunkhouser.com/builds/

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