Echoes from the torn down fourth wall - Genklangen fra den væltede fjerde væg
(2024)
author(s): Jacob Anderskov
published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
The project “Echoes from the torn down fourth wall” aims to build bridges between contemporary-music-as-an-art-form and community singing within songs from the Danish songbook ‘Højskolesangbogen’. In a hybrid concert format created for the project, within the context of an abstracted approach to intense, improvised concert music, several passages with community singing occur, where the audience sings along in songs they know. The research process has investigated how to create a musical environment that might bridge the different positions (art music and community singing), how the idea of the listener/spectator can be negotiated within different art domains and how, from a genre perspective, the project can be narrated as a meeting between confirming and destabilising forces. What is being reimagined in the project is not so much the past itself, and not necessarily established narratives about the past, but rather possible current and future narratives of how we may reinterpret songs from the past – together. What is being revealed is not so much specific perspectives in the past but rather hidden potentials in how a majority cultural assemblage like Højskolesangbogen may be renegotiated.
Abstract in Danish:
Projektet “Genklangen fra den væltede fjerde væg” forsøger at bygge broer mellem kunstmusikken og fællesskabet, her repræsenteret ved den danske sangbog ‘Højskolesangbogen’. I et hybridt koncertformat, skabt til projektet, hvor en intens, abstraheret tilgang til det musikalske materiale er gennemgående, opstår i løbet af koncerterne adskillige passager med fællessang, hvor publikum synger med på sange de kender. Projektet har blandt andet undersøgt hvordan vi kunne skabe et musikalske miljø, der kan bygge bro over de forskellige positioner (kunstmusik og fællessang), hvordan ideer om lytterens/tilskuerens roller kan genforhandles indenfor forskellige kunstdomæner, og hvordan projektet fra et genre-teoretisk perspektiv kan opfattes som et møde mellem bekræftende og destabiliserende kræfter. Det, der bliver gentænkt i projektet, er ikke så meget selve fortiden og heller ikke nødvendigvis etablerede fortællinger om fortiden, men snarere mulige samtidige og fremtidige fortællinger om, hvordan vi kan genfortolke sange fra fortiden – sammen. Og det der opdages, er ikke så meget skjulte perspektiver i fortiden, men derimod skjulte potentialer i, hvordan en majoritetskulturel ’assemblage’ som Højskolesangbogen kan genforhandles. Samtidig nedbrydes barrierer mellem udøvende og lytter, og der etablere nye måder at opleve ny musik på. Og vi mindes om, at vi aldrig ved, hvordan vores kulturelle fortid bliver fortolket i morgen.
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TRAVERSING SONIC TERRITORIES (TST)
(2023)
author(s): Søren Kjærgaard, Torben Snekkestad
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
What happens when musicians improvising on acoustic instruments sample and exchange their sound libraries? How can such a transgression of sonic territories contribute to an expanded understanding of one’s own sonic identity? And could this b/lending of identities point to a more ambiguous yet vibrant field of intra-play? Departing from these questions, this project intends to challenge our idea of sonic identity as a personal subject-oriented entity, and consequently investigate how a collaborative sharing of sampled sounds, can contribute to an expanded understanding of the sounds we play and are played by. Individual idiomatic approaches to one’s own instrument are thus interfered as we transgress habitual boundaries for action possibilities and musical imagination. The practice circulates from the duo of Torben Snekkestad and Søren Kjærgaard toward external collaborators, where the sharing process involves different approaches to audio sampling and mapping, embedding and embodying, listening and playing with each other’s sonic material to a point where authorship, origin, instrument and sonic identity is diffracted.
Transformative Reflections
(2023)
author(s): nikolaj hess
published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
This project investigates how Transformative Reflections can be developed as a range of methods and processes and how it can be used to create music based on and inspired by paintings.
The project has worked with developing a method for translating from painting to composition and improvisation, and making inspiration from another artistic domain tangible. It also seeks to get closer to the artistic material and inspiration that to me seems to lie before the art expresses itself as a work, with an idea of what could be called a pre-art.
Methodologically the project explores through four different method categories and an artwork dialogue perspective, both how to get closer to the intrinsic material and values in the reflected work, and to how the extrinsic expressions might translate to meaningful artworks in another domain, in this case music.
Furthermore, it investigates the potential of new artistic hybrid art experiences based on the findings and examines the processes and considerations of these.
The artistic purpose is through transformative reflections of painting to new works in improvisational and compositional contemporary music (jazz), to create a multidimensional, multisensory art experience space, where the individual work can be experienced both independently and in close communication with a work from another artistic domain.
Sculpting Air In The Sub Habitat
(2023)
author(s): Lotte Anker
published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
Sculpting Air in The Sub Habitat (subtitle: Texture and Form in Composition for Larger Ensemble of Improvisers) is an exploration and unfolding of creative processes in composing for a larger ensemble (6+ musicians) of improvisers as well as the processes in the ensemble rehearsals and concerts. In Sculpting Air, I am both composer and performer. I work with an ensemble created for this project: Sub Habitat.
Sub Habitat members are: Lotte Anker (DK), Mazen Kerbaj (GER/LBN), Katt Hernandez (S/USA), Nina de Heney (S), Sten Sandell (S), Andrea Neumann (GER), Burkhard Beins (GER)
Sculpting Air grew out of a need to deepen, (re)examine and challenge my compositional practice (including aesthetic preferences and inclinations) within a larger ensemble of improvisers, and I went into the project looking for something: more or less vague, fragmented notions of particular sonic and textural qualities and structural concepts. Notions of a higher degree of connectedness between predetermined and undetermined elements in composition etc.
The project is based on my own compositional work and 4 ensemble Sessions and Session concerts during 2020-22. It includes examples and reflections from these processes, and through them I try to articulate answers to the following research questions:
Based on the concepts of texture, MODE and LIBRARY, how can I develop new compositional tools for a larger ensemble of improvisers in a music that reflects the sonic palette and expression of the individual musician, the expression and identity of the ensemble as an entity, and my artistic intention?
Including:
How can these tools be deployed as sculpting materials in a large form piece, where the predetermined and indeterminate elements mutually reinforce each other and thus help to extend the musical space?
How can I explore the sonic potential of the ensemble in dialogue with the musicians?
How does the ensemble's overall expression inform my compositional work and vice versa?
In score form, how can I develop a specific vocabulary, concepts and notational forms that clarify my artistic intention and convey the balance between the predetermined and indeterminate elements of the composition?
Sonic Complexion
(2022)
author(s): Jacob Anderskov, Niclas Hundahl
published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
The Sonic Complexion project has investigated from an artistic perspective the musical dimensions texture and ‘klang’ (harmony), with the aim of creating new music and new perspectives. The outcomes of the project are a number of new albums, methodologies and perspectives, coming from quite different starting point in terms of how to systematically-artistically investigate texture and harmony.
Rooms of Resonance
(2022)
author(s): Lars Greve
published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
This is the final exposition for Lars Greves artistic research project "Rooms of Resonance" (2019-21), undertaken at the Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen.
The project seeks to investigate the artistic potentials in Greves acoustic solo improvisations, the concert room's acoustics and selected objects, which are brought into vibration.
Through experiments and procedural concerts, the research has hoisted artistic, technological and methodological experiences which will be unfolded in this exposition.
, Mimmi Bie 
