Potluck is a project I started in 2025 which brings together improvising musicians to share a collectively improvised meal and make a collectively improvised record.

In formalizing the practice of community and event making as its primary compositional feature, Potluck draws attention to the structure of improvised music as a system of interacting agents, whose musical affordances for action are shaped by social relationships and tensions, histories of interaction with music and musical tools, and maybe, just maybe, that cilantro hummus someone brought.

Instructions for Potluck:

"Potluck is a process for creating improvised food and music events. The process consists of three ordered stages: planning, sharing a meal, and a musical performance.

In the planning stage, the organizers decide upon a time and place to hold a recording and/or live performance of Potluck. This stage may involve the process of gathering additional individuals, who upon agreeing to participate, become organizers. Once a time and place is decided, each organizer individually plans and prepares a culinary dish of their choice to be shared in the next stage.

At the time and place decided in the planning stage, sharing a meal begins, and each organizer in attendance becomes a participant. Each participant shares their dish with the others in potluck style, creating an assortment of individually prepared dishes with which to construct a meal. Participants then create a meal to their liking, and dine together.

At the conclusion of the meal, participants perform a group musical improvisation of at least 30 minutes in length. The musical performance has no other specified musical requirements, other than that it is played with attention and respect to the environment and community created by the participants.

Any monetary proceeds of recordings or live performances of Potluck must be donated to local community efforts or organizations which support those affected by food insecurity."