11:00-12:00
HIP as a Creative Tool for Performance Design: Singing Satie’s Vocal Music
Héloïse Baldelli
University of Stavanger (2nd year presentation)
Moderator: Hagit Yakira
Presentation is moved to Wednesday at 12:00-13:00
Héloïse Baldelli: HIP as a Creative Tool for Performance Design: Singing Satie’s Vocal Music
University of Stavanger, Faculty of Performing Arts
The previous century has seen a wave of experimentation, reflection and discussion about art hitting most disciplines, starting first and foremost with visual art. As pianist-researcher Mine Dogantan-Dack points out, classical music has been slow to join in. Although composers have certainly been experimenting with the musical language pushing it in various direction, classical music performance as an artistic practice has relatively stayed the same. In the area of vocal music, the traditional recital format with the singer performing in a fixed position by the piano is THE standard.
In my project I aim to challenge and explore alternatives to this traditional format. I start by researching the performance practice of Satie’s mélodies to then design three different performances of this repertoire using three different artistic methods and theoretic approaches. The first cycle, which was concluded in August 2022, is based on the approach known as historical informed performance (HIP) and presents only music by Satie, while the next ones will include also mélodies by his friends and collaborators Milhaud and Poulenc.
Satie’s mélodies are little known and seldom performed. They are also difficult to appreciate at a first hearing, and my hypothesis is that this partly lies in the habit of performing them in the standard way of a chamber music recital. Investigating the original performance practice then became a way to rediscover other aspects of the music, beyond the dogmas of the score, and to find inspiration for creating a different mode of presenting classical vocal chamber music
In this presentation I retrace my use of HIP as a creative tool for designing performances of classical music. I will show some documentation from the performance and present a couple of songs live. I will discuss the performative choices the use of HIP led me to and the results they produced.
Finally, I will introduce my thoughts for the second cycle of performances. In this I will using dance and theatre (in particular monologue) as methods to reveal different layers of the musical works, almost with a cubist approach. In the performance, which for now I am calling “Singing decomposed”, each mélodie will be presented three times: as a monologue, as a dance piece and as a song.
Héloïse Baldelli is a French-Italian lyric soprano. She has a master degree in classical singing from the University of Stavanger under the guidance of international soprano Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz and a specialization in opera from the University of Tor Vergata, Rome. She has interpreted roles such as Contessa in “Le Nozze di Figaro”, Juliet in “The Little Sweep” and Cavaliere Armidoro in “La Cecchina”. She performs regularly as a soloist and in chamber music ensembles in Norway and abroad. She has worked with musicians such as Per Kristian Skalstad, Terje Kvam, Peter Szilvay, Gabriele Bonolis, Salvatore Scinaldi, Liv Oppdal, Friederike Wildschütz and Ghislain Gourvennec
As a PhD candidate, Héloïse is conducting her artistic research at the University of Stavanger, Department of Classical Music, since December 2020. Her project focuses on the performance practice of modernist French songs. She is particularly interested in the composer Satie and in how to infuse elements from other artistic disciplines into the performance tradition of his works.
Héloïse comes from two generations of artists, amongst which important representatives of the Italian modernist movement. Prior to becoming a singer, she was a dancer and a professional make-up artist and draws inspiration from these personal circumstances in her artistic practice.
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Jordan Sand: Polyphonic Processes for Bass and Voice
NTNU, Department of Music
My music constructs three-part harmonies from the interaction of bowed bass and voice. On the bass, the idiosyncratic combination of harmonics and low notes creates a two-tiered web of intervals with which to compose. My voice responds, occupying the role of a third harmonic, looking for gaps to fill or dissonances to enhance.
From the vantage point of 2019, writing from NYC, I built the PhD project around three compartmentalized phases, designed to isolate and strengthen different aspects of my process. The first phase would focus on acoustic practice, technique, and composition – the next would integrate electronics. In the final year, I would form an improvising chamber ensemble around the results from the first two years.
I moved to Norway and began the program in January 2020. None of it went according to plan – for global, cultural and bureaucratic reasons, as well as the shifting aesthetic targets they precipitated for me. The most valuable work, which for so long had seemed clearly defined, became something else entirely. Oddly, the process became more polyphonic, and more fascinating, than the music I had originally intended to write.
This presentation will be primarily audio. The half hour will be spent on a sound collage built from the phases, sub-projects, and encounters of the past 2.5 years, interspersed with live text reflecting on the 3rd year puzzle, of how to weave the artistic documents & knowledge pools from a fragmented time period into a cohesive and verifiable knowledge product in the framework of the artistic research PhD. Attendees are invited to focus mostly on listening. Hopefully this hour can be a small rest for the eyes.
Jordan Sand is a composer, bassist and vocalist, weaving vocals into the organ-like resonances of the bowed double bass. She currently lives in Trondheim, Norway, working as a resident artist and PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), producing new music for the polyphonic voices of her instrument.
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Craftmanship
Norwegian Academy of Music, NordART
Project period: 2020-2023
Project leader: Kjell Tore Innervik
Presenters: Kjell Tore Innervik, Maziar Raein and Håkon Høgemo
Traditionally, the Norwegian instrumental traditional music (folk music) has originated from the music being passed on orally from one musician to another. In the same way, music has been taught from musician to musician, from generation to generation. What has often characterized this transfer of knowledge is that it occurs through a series of gestures, hints and metaphors that are not directly stated, but it is "tacit".
In this project, the artists involved will go deeper into this knowledge transfer and try to put it into words. The goal is to find a language and vocabulary that can describe the craftman skills of the folk musician, and how it is transferred from musician to musician or from musician to dancer and vice versa. What are the nature of musical craft knowledge? What words and expressions can be used on the little gestures and hints communicated between the musicians? How can we describe the "magic moments" that arise in the performance situation? These are questions that the project wants to explore.
The project is led by Kjell Tore Innervik (percussion). Other participants are the folk musicians Unni Løvlid (song) and Håkon Høgemo (harding fiddle). The group also consists of folk dancer Silje Onstad Hålien, folk musician and early musician Claire Salaman and interaction designer Maziar Raein. The project is a collaboration with KHiO, the Royal College of Music and cultural schools in Sogn og Fjordane county and Lærdal municipality.
Gro Marie Svidal: Tryllespel
Norwegian Academy of Music, the department of folk-, jazz- and improvised music
Tryllespel is a Ph.D-project situated in the fields of both the traditional/folk- and improvised music. It takes the Hardanger fiddle and the Hardanger fiddle music as its starting point for unfolding a musical practice for an improvising Hardanger fiddle player.
In the project Gro Marie Svidal examines both idiomatic and non-idiomatic improvisations. In her idiomatic improvisations Svidal explores in what way she can use her folk music vocabulary, for example modal, motif-based melodies, micro improvisations, different tuning of the fiddle and so on. In the non-idiomatic improvisations, she examines the Hardanger fiddle as a sonic object, exploring the acoustic sonic spectrum of the fiddle by using for example extended fiddle techniques. Finally, she also explores ways of intertwining the two forms of improvisation.
The aim of the project is to explore what personal musical practice can arise when she, as a performer of the Norwegian folk music tradition, gain inspiration and knowledge from a selection of other performance traditions and practitioners of improvised and classical contemporary music, and let it intertwine in her music.
In her presentation she will give you an insight to the artistic ideas for her project, the contextualization, and the potentially contribution to the folk music field.
Gro Marie Svidal is a well-established and renowned performer and interpreter of the traditional Norwegian Hardanger fiddle music. She has immersed herself in the traditional music from the west coast of Norway. She is an alumna of The Ole Bull Academy for Norwegian Folk Music and has bachelor and a master’s degree from The Norwegian Academy of Music. In 2014, Svidal won first prize at the prestigious national competition, Landskappleiken, and become national champion on her Hardanger fiddle. Furthermore, she has also accepted Norwegian grants and other awards for her music. Svidal has released two solo albums. Both albums received critical acclaim from amongst others Songlines, and Lira and were nominated to the Norwegian Folk Music Award, FolkeLarm-prisen.
Svidal gives concerts in Norway and abroad both as a soloist and in collaboration with musicians from different genres, dancers, storytellers, and players. She has performed as actress in theatre plays at Sogn and Fjordane Theatre (Teater Vestland) and toured extensively in rural Norway giving school performances under the auspices of Arts for Young Audiences of Norway. Photo: Martin Hugne