Build Your Own Clay Instrument

This workshop will be led in both English and Spanish depending on participant preference. Registration is required as supplies are limited.

Musical instruments have helped us communicate and express ourselves since the beginning of human culture. Learning about the musical instruments of the ancient Americas and building and playing our own instruments helps us to awaken the memory of our connection to nature, cultivate presence through working with clay, and experience joy through sound and music-making. In this hands-on workshop we will learn about musical instruments that have been made across Central and South America for thousands of years and learn to build our own working clay rattles.

Your instructor for this workshop will be Melissa Hyatt Foss. Melissa is an instrument-maker, musician, composer-performer and teaching artist who co-creates with an ever-growing collection of instruments that she hand-crafts with clay. Her instruments reimagine Pre-Columbian sound artifacts of the Americas. Foss received her training in Argentina and developed her career as a performer, instrument-maker, teaching artist, and researcher for nearly a decade in connection with the National University of Argentina. There she completed her master’s degree in Musical Composition, New Technologies, and Traditional Arts and performed as a soloist for 7 years with the Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies.

All are welcome, and no previous experience with clay, instruments, or music is necessary.

This workshop will require participants to pick up their newly kiln-fired pieces roughly three weeks after the program.

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