scholarly journals Tools of the trade: click-tracks and conductors

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Moore
Keyword(s):  
New Music ◽  
Active Choice ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Artistic Directors ◽  
Secondary Phenomenon ◽  
Depth Interviews

This essay will examine the manner in which composers and artistic directors have used conductors and click-tracks within the context of new music ensembles performing integrative concerts. The analyses and examples provided will rely for the most part on material gathered during in-depth interviews that I conducted with artistic directors, composers, conductors, and musicians, all of whom are professionally active in the new music field in Europe (and beyond). I will examine the application of both click-tracks and conductors and demonstrate that their implementation represents an active choice made by either the composer and/or artistic directors. Both click-tracks and conductors are viewed by the interviewees as potential tools with somewhat overlapping possibilities and capacities and their presence is no secondary phenomenon of the music. They become instead a means for the above actors to meet their objectives, be they artistic, pragmatic, technical, or otherwise.

THE INSTRUMENTALISED CONDUCTOR

Tempo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (297) ◽  
pp. 48-60
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Moore
Keyword(s):  
New Music ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Artistic Directors ◽  
Depth Interviews

AbstractThis article explores ways in which artistic directors and composers of new music ensembles have developed and redefined the role of the conductor to achieve specific goals and fulfil musical and artistic need. It will explore various manners in which they have instrumentalised the conductor – literally an embodied role – and opened new possibilities for musical expression. The analysis and examples provided will rely for the most part on material gathered during in-depth interviews conducted with artistic directors, composers, conductors and musicians who are professionally active in the new music field in Europe and beyond. The article endeavours to bring into greater detail artistic and socio-economic motivations for utilising conductors in new music ensembles.

scholarly journals Understanding the liminality of individual giving to the arts

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-33
Author(s):  
Stephanie E. Pitts ◽  
Marta Herrero ◽  
Sarah M. Price
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Individual Giving ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Individual Donor

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of donors to a UK-based contemporary music organisation fundraising scheme through the theoretical lens of liminality.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth interviews with 16 members of the Sound Investment scheme investigated the motivations and experiences of individual donors to the commissioning of new music. Thematic analysis suggested parallels with the framework of “liminality,” which shed new light on the ways in which membership changed donors' relationships with the organisation and audience.FindingsMotivations for supporting contemporary music commissioning included personal interest, cultural responsibility and alignment to the values of the organisation. Tangible benefits, particularly access to rehearsals, brought donors into closer connection with the creative and managerial working of the organisation.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample did not include any lapsed donors, or people who had chosen not to participate. Future research could test the liminal framework in different artforms and through different tangible benefits.Practical implicationsUnderstanding donors as liminals could help arts organisations to develop membership schemes that more effectively sustain individual giving. Key elements of involvement and access are identified that could engage audiences more widely.Originality/valueThis case study foregrounds lived experience of arts donors where previous literature has primarily focussed on motivations for donating. It highlights the liminal elements of becoming an individual donor, namely, the integration and socialisation processes, the space-and time-bound interactions with the organisation and the alignment of values with the organisation. This framework offers a new way for arts organisations to understand and enhance individual giving in a time of austerity.

London, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Brighton Dome: Big Noise Tour

Tempo ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 58 (228) ◽  
pp. 61-62
Author(s):  
John Godfrey
Keyword(s):  
Coming Out ◽  
Art Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Brass Bands ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Music Ensemble ◽  
New Type ◽  
Minimal Music ◽  
Louis Andriessen

Big Noise – heard in London on 21 November and repeated at the Dome (Corn Exchange) in Brighton on the 22nd – was a collaboration between the highly idiosyncratic New Music ensembles Orkest de Volharding (Holland) and Icebreaker (UK). The former was established by the amazingly influential Dutch composer Louis Andriessen: reacting against the elitist music of his youth, he saw the need for a new type of Art-music ensemble which could travel into the streets and play music with a broad appeal. Borrowing from the model of Dutch street bands (the equivalent, perhaps, of the UK's brass bands), jazz of the 1920s, Minimal music coming out of America and the European avant-garde, Andriessen created an ensemble and a language with an overt non-elitist agenda.

Transmitting Passione

2021 ◽  
pp. 594-612
Author(s):  
Sarah Pini ◽  
John Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Ethnographic Methods ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
Artistic Vision ◽  
Artistic Directors ◽  
Depth Interviews

This work addresses the case of the Ballet National de Marseille (BNM) and the 2017 recreation of the piece Passione, created by the artistic directors Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten. This study, informed by a phenomenological approach, adopts ethnographic methods, including participant observation, in-depth interviews, and one researcher’s direct involvement with the practices of enculturation and enskillment in this dance form. It investigates how the dancers of the BNM articulate their diverse forms of agency in relation to the choreographer’s artistic vision and demands. By looking at the specific case of the BNM staging of Passione, we can isolate some significant features of contemporary ballet’s trajectory as an emergent dance genre on the edge between innovation and tradition.

All-Stars

Industry ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 138-160
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Earned Income ◽  
The Road ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Contemporary Classical Music ◽  
Bang On A Can ◽  
History Of ◽  
On The Road

In 1992, Bang on a Can launched their own in-house ensemble, the All-Stars, an amplified sextet designed to take the spirit of the festival on the road. Along with building a new audience via national and international tours, the All-Stars also unlocked a new source of earned income for Bang on a Can amidst an era of declining government support. The sound and image of the extroverted ensemble facilitated a pivot in Bang on a Can’s identity, from strongly emphasizing the overcoming of stylistic divides within new music (as epitomized by the uptown–downtown binary) to instead emphasizing the blurring of genre boundaries between contemporary classical music and rock. The All-Stars also instantiated a division of labor between composers and performers that was unusual in the history of new-music ensembles and led to some significant tensions, tied to how Bang on a Can carefully positioned their new group toward the marketplace.

TOWARDS THE SUMMERS NIGHT: A MENTORING PROJECT FOR AUSTRALIAN COMPOSERS IDENTIFYING AS WOMEN

Tempo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (292) ◽  
pp. 49-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cat Hope ◽  
Nat Grant ◽  
Gabriella Smart ◽  
Tristen Parr
Keyword(s):  
Gender Diversity ◽  
New Music ◽  
Gender Minority ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Short Tour ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThe Summers Night Project is an ongoing composer-mentoring programme established in 2018 by musicians Cat Hope and Gabriella Smart, with the support of the Perth-based new music organisation Tura New Music. The project aims to support and mentor emerging Australian female and gender minority composers to create new compositions for performance, with the aim of growing the gender diversity of composers in music programmes across Australia. Three composers were chosen from a national call for submissions, and works were performed by an ensemble consisting of members from the Decibel and Soundstream new music ensembles. Three new works were workshopped, recorded then performed on a short tour of Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne, Australia in July 2018. The project takes its name and inspiration from Australian feminist Anne Summers, author of the ground-breaking examination of women in Australia's history Damned Whores and God's Police (1975) and was inspired by her 2017 Women's Manifesto. This article examines the rationale for such a project, the processes and results of the project itself, and plans for its future.

The Rockefeller Foundation, the University New Music Center, and “Foundation Music”

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-128
Author(s):  
Michael Sy Uy
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
Rockefeller Foundation ◽  
Experimental Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
New Yorker ◽  
Chamber Ensembles ◽  
Milton Babbitt ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
The University

This chapter focuses on the Rockefeller Foundation’s support of university new music centers and contemporary chamber ensembles, offering new insights into a commonly understood historiography of U.S. twentieth-century music: the dominance and prestige of experimental music and serialism at universities. Most notably, composers at Columbia, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and Mills College served dually as outside experts and commissioned artists and performers. Milton Babbitt, Otto Luening, and Vladimir Ussachevsky benefited greatly from their involvement at Rockefeller and the Columbia–Princeton Electronic Music Center. The composers and performers justified their work initially through the Soviet threat and rivalries with European studios, and later with innovation and creativity. The new music ensembles solidified a musical circuit that crisscrossed the country, making stops at many Rockefeller-funded centers. The foundation revealed ways it was both an advertent and inadvertent patron of what New Yorker critic Winthrop Sargeant pejoratively referred to as “foundation music.”

Cracking the Dutch Early Music Movement: the Repercussions of the 1969 Notenkrakersactie

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAILAN R. RUBINOFF
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Early Music ◽  
Music Schools ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Historical Performance ◽  
Early Music Movement ◽  
Music Programming

AbstractThe Notenkrakersactie of 17 November 1969 was a landmark event for Dutch musical life: a group of composers disrupted a concert of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, protesting against the orchestra's lack of contemporary music programming. Scholars have tended to interpret this protest as a watershed for the avant-garde, but historical performance – not just contemporary music – proved to be a significant beneficiary. Early Musicians, like New Musicians, had common political goals and appealed to the youth counterculture. Ensuing reforms to the federal arts subsidy system, state-funded music schools, and conservatories in the 1970s were also advantageous for the Dutch Early Music movement. During the welfare retrenchment of the 1980s and the subsidy restructuring of the 1990s, Early Music ensembles economized and had greater success with mainstream recording companies and audiences than new music groups. Nearly forty years after the Notenkrakersactie, traditional symphony orchestras have less influence on Dutch musical life, but recent cutbacks to arts subsidies threaten contemporary music and historical performance alike.

London Sinfonietta: ‘Spectrum of Sound’ at Southbank Centre and White Cube Gallery residency, February/March 2015

Tempo ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (273) ◽  
pp. 33-35
Author(s):  
Cameron Graham
Keyword(s):  
New Music ◽  
Concert Hall ◽  
Artistic Experience ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
Concert Halls ◽  
The Relationship

How important is it for ensembles and orchestras to engage in performances outside of the typical concert environment? With a seemingly endless number of works commissioned and premiered every year, one could continue to experience new music without ever straying from the concert halls. Although cross-artistic endeavours between music and arts institutions are creating new and exciting performance environments, more often than not collaborative endeavours fail in their ability to communicate the relationship between mediums clearly and faithfully. Uniting different art forms into a single artistic experience is often seized as an opportunity to take music out of the concert hall and into more unorthodox performance spaces: do we need to see reputable music ensembles engage in projects with other art forms, or should organisations be created with this type of practice at the heart of their work?

Studio Production in Contemporary Vietnam

2021 ◽  
pp. 133-155
Author(s):  
Lonán Ó Briain
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
Cultural Sustainability ◽  
Music Production ◽  
First Case ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Music Ensemble ◽  
Culture Brokers

Chapter 5 examines how and why the VOV music ensembles are keeping their red music relevant in contemporary Vietnam. In the reform era, the ensembles were separated into two groups: the national or ethnic music ensemble (nhóm nhạc dân tộc), comprised of traditional instrumentalists and folk singers, and the new music ensemble (nhóm nhạc mới), which performs Vietnamese songs and instrumental music composed for choir and chamber orchestra. Drawing on fieldwork at the radio studios in Hanoi, this research provides an ethnographic account of contemporary music production processes at the station. The first case study examines how recordings by the traditional music ensemble, a versatile group of instrumentalists and folk singers, represent and reify the three major cultural regions of Vietnam. The second explores how productions by the new music ensemble, which reference the musical styles of DRV revolutionary opera, memorialize government achievements, valorize heroes of the past, and are made relevant to the contemporary political context through references to current issues such as territorial claims in the South China Sea. Rather than dismiss these musicians as political puppets, the chapter investigates their creative, pragmatic approaches to the constraints and contradictions of life in a (post)socialist state. Meanwhile, culture brokers working at these national broadcasters are leading the politicization of this intangible cultural heritage, a process they justify with the language of cultural sustainability.

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