The upcoming season: A lot to look forward to!

As the first post of this season, this is a brief newsletter about a new publication and three, partly collaborative, conference presentations in Helsinki, Oslo and London. There are also several other projects coming up, which will be covered more in depth in the following posts.

The new publication of the core team of the Professorship Performative Processes, When you are not there, where are you?, is in its final stages. This concludes a large project initiated by Dutch documentary maker Maartje Nevejan, which spans many activities during the last two years, including the practical work of the team of the professorship with a group of children suffering from absence epilepsy seizures, a collaborative performance lecture in Prague, the performance installation Down next to a whole range of other artistic work, and the lecture Transforming Absence. Art as Bridge from Multimodal Experience to Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Cape Town in December 2016. In the end of August, the core team of the professorship (Nirav Christophe, Henny Dörr, Joris Weijdom and Falk Hübner) will present another collaborative performance lecture called Transforming Absence. Re-creating Experience through Artistic Research at the Carpa conference in Helsinki.

In November I will give a lecture on artistic research as “integrated practice” at the conference ‘The Protean Musician’: the musician in future society. This is the first lecture in which I develop this concept of artistic research in relation to higher music education and the students’ future in society. A wide array of presenters will join the conference from many countries around the globe, and this promises to be a most interesting and impactful conference “examining the roles of musicians in our increasingly complex world.” (Darla Crispin) The conference is organized by The Arne Hordheim Centre for Artistic Research in Music (NordART), The Centre for Research in Music and Health (CREMAH), The Centre for Educational Research in Music (CERM) and The Centre of Excellence in Music Performance Education (CEMPE) (abstract).

Finally, in February I will join forces with Christina Guillaumier, pianist, Head of Undergraduate Studies at the Royal College of Music in London and a Creative Director of the Innovative Conservatoire (ICON). Together we will present The Musician in Society – From Craftsmanship to Creative Citizen at the Reflective Conservatoire Conference at Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. We will address conservatoire reality nowadays, in relation to the quickly changing development of our world and social surroundings, and use the work of the Innovative Conservatoire as a case study that might provide a toolkit for innovative practice both in student and teacher training.

Apart from these scholarly activities, two artistic projects are still in process and will be concluded this season: the music theatre silencio with trumpet player Sef Hermans, and a new participatory music theatre work with the Dutch vocal quartet Quatre Bouches. More on these projects in the upcoming posts!