Dr Sara Carvalho
Senior lecturer at Aveiro University, Portugal and Research Fellow INET-MD / Portugal (she/her)
Audience participation in live new music pieces: from the score to the performance
New music* is often perceived by the audience as challenging, and often generates controversial opinions. Several reasons are given, and they go from the type of musical language adopted by several composers in the 20th and 21st centuries, to the lack of Music Education.
In public performances of contemporary music within the Western-art tradition, the interaction between the audience and the performers is scarce and often unlikely, as it is restrained by artistic protocols that condition the audience to specific rules; for instance: silence during the performance, applause at specific moments, and no coughing.
Moreover, very often the first (and only) time listening to a new music piece is in the context of a première, and the audience needs to be predisposed to listen and to make sense of a piece that has never been listened to before.
Even if the reception of newly composed classical music piece is often a complex, it opens up the possibility to reflect on the relationship between composers, performers, and listeners.
New music works have been providing unique opportunities for composer/performer collaboration; however, no significant research has yet investigated how to further include, engage and promote the participation of the audience into new music pieces or concerts, and specifically research that discusses the composition process itself. Therefore, as a composer, I started to research alternative paths to find a more effective way to engage listeners into new music, with the objective to slowly reaching out to further audiences.
So far I have written 7 pieces that invite the audience to participate in the new music performance. In this presentation I will describe on how I have been integrating the audience as performers in my music, including a specific part in score for the audience to participate. I will also analyse in more depth the piece “occupied mirrors”, for toy piano and audience, that will be performed during this presentation.
* newly composed music created in the Western classical tradition
Sara Carvalho is a composer, senior lecturer at Aveiro University and fellow researcher at INET -MD. As composer she is interested in researching aspects associated with gesture, musical narrative, audience as performers, and performer-composer collaboration. Her folio has over 80 pieces that are played regularly, and were commissioned by prestigious institutions, ensembles, and soloists of international merit. Several of her pieces are available on CD and many of her scores are published by the Portuguese Music Information & Investigation Centre.
John Sloboda, OBE, FBA
Emeritus Professor, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London (he/him)
Engaging audiences in live “high-art” concerts: the “Understanding Audiences” Research Programme
Why have Western audiences for live classical concerts declined inexorably over the last 50 years? It is argued that contemporary audiences seek more active engagement than traditional formats offer. This presentation outlines a multidimensional framework for understanding the concert experience from the point of view of audience members, which has been applied in a 10-year research programme at Guildhall School of Music & Drama. In this programme researchers have worked alongside composers and performing artists to devise and test innovative forms of audience engagement, up to and including direct participation as performers. Examples are given which articulate this framework and assess the impact of innovations on both audiences and artists. The presentation goes into particular detail in research on the CONNECT project of Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne (Toelle & Sloboda, 2019), in which two composers (Christian Mason, Huang Ruo) were commissioned to write pieces with parts for audience that were performed in concerts by the London Sinfonietta, Asko and Schönberg (Amsterdam) and Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt). The project obtained in-depth feedback from performing audience members about the value to them of the experience.
John Sloboda is a research psychologist who has made the psychology of music his specialist interest since the 1970s. He spent most of his career at Keele University where he founded Europe’s first MSc in Music Psychology. Since 2009 he has been associated with the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, where he is now Emeritus Professor.
Késia Decoté
Marie Slodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Bergen, (she/her)
music as an invitation: an experience of co-creating an online concert
The life of a pianist can be a lonely one. In the project music as an invitation, a group of women – musicians (most of them, classical pianists) and non-musicians, have been exploring a changing on this lonely paradigm, by engaging in processes of collective creation, exploring ideas which will culminate in an online concert. This paper will present the project, discussing the methods developed throughout the collective creative process and the outcomes so far, also drawing reflections about the sense of liveness in this musical experience in a digital context.
Késia Decoté is a Brazilian pianist and toy pianist specialising in contemporary music and in interdisciplinary practices. Késia is interested in exploring innovative ways to present piano music, looking for creating unique and deeply immersive artistic experiences for her audience. Her recordings include the EP ‘Para a frente’ (released by Nonclassical, London) which features piano and toy piano works dedicated to her by emerging UK-based composers.
Dr. Mike Blow
Professor of Interdisciplinary Art at Yamanashi Gakuin University, Japan, (he/him)
One Trick Ponies and Magical Mysteries; Increasing Audience Engagement in Participatory Work
Interactive artworks can be an unforgettable experience. But they can also be a ‘one trick pony’ that prioritise instantaneous spectacle over deeper engagement. In my talk, I want to explore ideas for deepening and lengthening audience engagement with a piece. The idea for the talk was prompted by my observations of the way people interact with my own artworks, as well as my experiences of those by other artists, and I will discuss examples of each in an attempt to find ways that might help give interactive works more depth.
Dr Mike Blow has a multidisciplinary background, having studied, worked in and taught sound art, music composition and performance, electronics, software and AI. His work has been shown in a wide range of locations, from the Southbank Center and the Barbican in London to town squares and arts festivals across the UK. Since moving to Japan in 2019 he has focused on composing soundtracks for photo montage films and during the pandemic he created an online interactive version of ‘Aeolus’ Cabinet’, one of his physical sound sculptures.
Raheel Kahn
Independent artist, UK (he/him)
Devotion through communal experience – Shaping space through body and voice
Khan’s ‘In Harmony’ exhibition, presented at Audiograft festival in October 2023 focused on audience participation and collective improvisation.
In this talk, Khan expands on his research for the exhibition. He will focus on the interstitial spaces between cultural identities, histories and beliefs that place importance on the embodiment of sound, often influencing experiences of transcendence, resistance and/or social cohesion.
Raheel Khan is an artist and musician whose practice explores the interstices between sound, text, music and installation. Originally studying Economics, Raheel has moved towards a practice that centres the notion of vacant infrastructure and policy, often creating through various compositional methods and layering of abstraction. His current research explores repetitive gestures through machine noise, devotional loops and acoustic pressure, alternating and exchanging between these elements as a starting point to create the dialogue surrounding his work.
Professor Jill Halstead
Griegakademiet – Institutt for musikk, Universitetet i Bergen (she/her)
Unruly Listeners: Collaboration, participation, and the undoing of auditory norms
As Pablo Helguera notes, “participation, as a blanket term, can quickly lose its meaning around art”. His tentative taxonomy of nominal, directed, creative and collaborative modes of participation can be seen as points of a compass useful when navigating the complex landspace of social engaged arts practice.
In this presentation I will focus on practices of collaboration that seek to counter normative regimes, and processes of marginalisation that delegitimise coming-together. Thinking with Pauline Oliveros and Sara Ahmed, and examples form my own interdisciplinary work, I will reflect on how practices of sonic engagement raise important questions as to how sound and listening can contribute to fostering human relationalities within situations of struggle and loss.
Jill Halstead is a musician and writer. Through her publications and creative practice work she addresses issues of gender and difference in relation to creativity and musical participation. She has specialized in interdisciplinary projects with marginalised communities, most recently including participatory work with elders, and creating music for film and dance theatre works about the social stigmatization of aging and dis/ability. Since 2018 she has collaborated with Brandon LaBelle on the artistic research project Social Acoustics which explores listening as a social practice. She currently leads Music4Change, and the Erasmus+ funded project focused on social and environmental sustainability in music research and education.
Dr Xenia Pestova Bennett
Freelance composer and performer (she/her)
Birds, seascapes and plastic debris: the audience as co-creator in environmental music
The overwhelming impact and fallout of the human presence on our planet can be difficult to grasp and painful to come to terms with. How can we collectively make sense of this changing world as artists?
Pianist and composer Xenia Pestova Bennett presents two contrasting keyboard works confronting the boundaries of the musical instrument that carries more weight of tradition than any other: the concert grand piano.
From near-extinction and miraculous return of endangered bird species in New Zealand situated within a collaborative electronic soundscape by Miriama Young to plastic debris choking the coastlines of Northern Ireland and stifling the voice of the piano in a new work by Pestova Bennett, these pieces open an invitation to join in a search for new ways of listening, connection with the environment and our place within it.
Described as “a powerhouse of contemporary keyboard repertoire” (Tempo), pianist and composer Xenia Pestova Bennett has earned an international reputation as a leading proponent of uncompromising music. Her work spans a wide range of sound worlds, styles and genres from classical to contemporary art music, free improvisation, experimental electronica and avant-pop. Her music is featured in the 2023 film “Get Well Soon” by acclaimed director Ian Pons Jewell.