A “total immersion” event in Cambridge this weekend marks the climax of a conference examining the work of performers and their creative role in making music.
A “total immersion” event in Cambridge this weekend marks the climax of a conference examining the work of performers and their creative role in making music.
This is the culmination, if not the acid test, of three days of scholarly discussion about what performers do, how they do it, and how people respond to it.
John Rink
More than 30 musicians will take part in a six-hour celebration of performance in Cambridge this weekend.
The “Total Performance Event”, on Saturday evening at Robinson College, will start around dinner time and continue into the small hours of the morning. On the way, the audience will be treated to performances by “Sweete Violence” from Basel, the Hills Road Folk Group, the Ealdwick Ensemble, an Indian dancer, the jazz quintet METROPOLIS, and soloists such as the singer Lesley-Jane Rogers, oboist Christopher Redgate and clarinettist Roger Heaton.
Conceived by John Rink in collaboration with Jeremy Thurlow and Ewan Campbell, the event will mark the climax of a major conference on performance studies which is taking place in Cambridge this week.
For generations musicology has focused on the study of composers and compositions, but it has neglected the fact that music as an art has as much to do with the work of performers. Rather than just acting as mediators who convey someone else’s music to an audience, performers have to be highly creative in their own right. Whether they emerge on the spot or over time, the decisions of performers have the potential to shape music in altogether unique ways, influencing if not determining how listeners experience that music.
What performers do and how people respond to what they do are the key subjects of the conference, which has been organised by the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP), based in the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Music.
More than 140 delegates from around the world will hear some 90 research papers on such subjects as how musicians imagine and visualise music before or as they play it; how composers and performers together create “new music”; improvisation across a range of styles and traditions; the complex relationship between recorded and live performances; and how to perform music in the first place – whether the works of the classical masters, modern compositions, or improvisations.
Unlike most academic conferences, however, this one will end by immersing its participants directly in the subject matter itself, with a six-hour journey through a vast range of musical idioms. Those attending the event at Robinson will have a radically different experience from that of most concertgoers.
John Rink, Professor of Musical Performance Studies at the University of Cambridge, said: “The Total Performance Event is the culmination, if not the acid test, of three days of scholarly discussion about what performers do, how they do it, and how people respond to it.”
“Listeners will feast on a performance smorgasbord – a ‘tasting menu’ – that will celebrate the role performers play not only in bringing composers’ music to life, but in creating it themselves.”
More information about the work of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice can be found here.
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