Echoes - An exploration of the African rhythmic influence in Costa Rican folk music
(2024)
author(s): Nelson Briceño Peraza
published in: Research Catalogue
This exposition presents my final project for the Master of Arts in Jazz Performance, Drumset, undertaken from autumn 2022 to spring 2024. The project was motivated by my exposure to diverse African rhythms, which revealed potential connections with the traditional music of my Costa Rican heritage. Growing up surrounded by Costa Rican folk music, including African-origin instruments such as the marimba, quijongo, as well as cimarronas (street bands), deeply influenced my musical identity. This project aims to explore and integrate these rhythms, tracing their African roots and merging them with contemporary musical forms.
Inspired by Henry Cole's perspective on folklore as the essence and life of music, this research emphasizes the importance of connecting academic knowledge with folk traditions. Throughout my career, I have engaged with various musical traditions, always seeking to blend them with folk music. This project builds on my previous work, which examined the introduction and adaptation of Costa Rican folk rhythms on the modern drumset. In this continuation, I focus on the historical and rhythmic connections between Latin American and African traditions, using artistic research to deepen the understanding and appreciation of these intertwined musical heritages.
A Dialogue of Music between East and West: New Interpretations of 20th-Century Art Songs Based on Ancient Chinese Poems
(2024)
author(s): Zijing Meng
published in: Research Catalogue
This research aims to combine my two artistic identities as a Chinese zither (古筝) player and as a classical singer. After researching, interpreting and analyzing two art song cycles from the 20th century, 5 Poems of Ancient China and Japan by Charles Griffes and Songs of Autumn (秋之歌) by Zhongrong Luo (罗忠镕), I integrate Chinese traditional music forms, ornamentation and instrumentation into my vocal performance. The methodology includes literature review, expert interview, internet media review, score analysis, language analysis and experimental music practice. The outcomes highlight my approach of incorporating inspiration from zither music and folk singing styles into the art song cycles, while also addressing the ethical considerations encountered throughout the research process.
New (old) Music - Intercontextual Compositional Methodologies
(2023)
author(s): Martín Mayo
published in: KC Research Portal
It would be more than reductive to say that art is not created in a vacuum. Simply said, all art exists in a context, and said context includes medium, genre, style, and idiom, amongst other things. In the realm of Western music, much insight has been given regarding quotation, and less so regarding subtler applications of stylistic, generic, and idiomatic thought in composition. So, if all music exists in a specific context, how can composers creatively account for context in their compositions? This research seeks to answer this question by outlining methodologies via analysis of relevant works. Given the background and musical focus of the researcher, this research predominantly focuses on musical works that adapt or interact with Latin-American folkloric music and traditions, with many works dealing specifically with Venezuelan and Cuban folklore.
Structures for Freedom: In-performance communication in Traditional musicians in Scotland
(2022)
author(s): Lori Watson
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition articulates tacit knowledge in processes associated with contemporary Traditional music practice in Scotland. Using a case study experiment and a series of workshop performances recorded in 2008, I examine the processes, communication and performance strengths of four leading Traditional and cross-genre creative musicians. In particular, examples of in-performance communication and collaboration emerge.
Tradering, oppløsing
(2022)
author(s): Ingfrid Breie Nyhus
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
TRADITIONING, DISSOLVING: What does 'traditioning' mean, what can the 'traditioned' become? On exploring rules and possible spaces in tradition and creation.
To Ingfrid Breie Nyhus, the apparently impossible combination of folk music and grand piano, is a creatively generative musical situation. The rules of the 'slått' tradition are transposed to a new space in the grand piano, and the rules of the grand piano are destabilized in the meeting with the 'slått'. This exposition unfolds questions, reflections and new questions, from a longer process with the music "Slåttepiano".
Karol Szymanowski and Polish Folklore. Using Podhale folk music to inform performances of Szymanowski's Harnasie
(2022)
author(s): Ania Szafraniec
published in: KC Research Portal
Karol Szymanowski and Polish Folklore. Compositional copy or inspiration? What musical choices might be made for performing Harnasie and other violin pieces by using knowledge of Podhale folk music to inform violin performance practice.
In this exposition I present my research which consists of a few elements.
Firstly, to get acquainted with the composer - Karol Szymanowski and focus on his Nationalistic period. While exploring Podhale folklore and understanding its main characteristics, I did analyze the way Szymanowski uses this particular folklore in his pieces.
Then, the focus goes to Szymanowski’s most important work of the period - ballet Harnasie and its comperisement with the violin transcription. To discover whether the folk citations used in his pieces are just a copy of original melodies or inspiration and how do they connect with each other?
A significant and most important part of my research is finding out how the knowledge gained through this process can improve and enrich the performance of Szymanowski’s violin music. In short my conclusions are as follows. Folkloristic parts should be treated as original Highlanders would play it. Therefore, violinists need to get some sound simplicity such as no vibrato or playing in the first position. On the other hand, the lyrical parts are very contrasting. Szymanowski was inspired by singers and the way his dear violinist friend Paweł Kochański played. Therefore, the lyrical parts can be compared to the human voice, with a sweet romantic sound, natural voice like breathing in the phrases, continuous fast vibrato.
Situating Personal Values in Artistic Practice: Towards a Reflective and Reflexive Framework
(2022)
author(s): Annick Odom
published in: KC Research Portal
In what ways can a musician use reflexivity and reflection to situate her personal values in her artistic practice? To answer this question and put the results into practice, the author combined archival and digital research, interviews, and fieldwork. By combining new and found materials inspired by Appalachian folk music and the state of West Virginia, the connected auto-ethnographic case study is a reflective attempt of the author to engage critically with her personal values of empathy, inclusion, and equity in her artistic practice. Using the reflective lenses of the author’s autobiography as an artist, the audience’s reactions, fellow artists comments, and literature review, she was better able to reflexively see her own assumptions and missteps, better allowing her to situate her personal values within her artistic practice. Besides creating a reflective framework by which other artists could consider their own artistic practice, she also found that by taking on new roles outside that of the traditional classically trained performer, she had a greater agency to influence and understand performance elements such as design and form, materials, context, audience, and production process.
Polska Travels: Composing (at) the Crossroads. In search of an itinerant musical home.
(2022)
author(s): Krishna Nagaraja
published in: University of the Arts Helsinki
This Exposition illustrates my artistic doctoral project 'Polska Travels', wherein I use composition and arrangement as practices for the hybridisation of several musical genres, with folk music from Sweden, Finland and Norway and Western art music as points of departure.
From its baroque German-Polish origins to the current Nordic local variants, the polska folk dance tune type has enjoyed a history marked by the crossing of geographical, temporal, and societal boundaries. The interdisciplinary study of this phenomenon addresses both theoretical and practical fields, such as musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, and the performance practice of the local polska styles. The gathered knowledge becomes the basis for of the creation of new music that sits right ‘at’ the crossroads of many genres but further aims at composing ‘the’ crossroads itself, in the form of hybrid, temporary “musical homes” able to negotiate a dynamic dialogue between ever-changing personal identities and external bodies of knowledge.
The artistic output is organised in four concerts, each focusing on a different geographic area where the polska thrived, and a CD recording. The written thesis summarises the research findings, taking the string quartet ‘Stringar’ based on the Norwegian springar as a case study to suggest the concept of “personal tradition” inscribed in the open, itinerant field of trans-genre contemporary music.
Searching for the Siren | Exploring contemporary vocal aesthetics
(2022)
author(s): Kristia Michael
published in: KC Research Portal
“Searching for the Siren” explores contemporary vocal approaches that mirror the aesthetics and the contemporary perception of defining the elements of Beauty. Specifically, three main thematics are researched: 1) The Folk Voice, which explores how folk elements and timbres enter in classical and popular music, 2) The Extended Voice, which describes the use of extended vocal techniques with reference to technical and physical aspects of timbral contrasts, vocal fry, scream and inhalation phonation, 3) The Absent, Transformed and Replaced Voice which occurred with the technological development. Ends with conclusions around the definition of the mythical creature of the Siren and its relation to the human voice. Every aspect includes personal views, works, performances and syllogisms.
FolkImproV
(2015)
author(s): Andreas Aase
connected to: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
published in: Research Catalogue
Can pieces of dance tunes from Nordic folk music, organized according to principles from jazz, provide source material for building an improvisation language?
Scandinavian folk music traditionally used for dancing consists of melodies, organized in a limited amount of measures and sections (typically two or three eight-bar sections, played with repeats). The organizing principle in ensemble playing is for every musician to learn the melody first, and to let each following contribution be dictated by it. Variations in arrangements occur frequently in modern-day interplay, with harmony parts, chord changes, counter rhythms and dynamics meticulously employed in order to avoid monotony. But interpretation of the melody remains the main activity.
The ability for creativity on the spot is big among folk musicians, though it is seemingly framed by the strategies discussed above. I have yet to come across a methodical investigation of using material from traditional tunes as a musical vocabulary for improvisation. Consulting supervisors from the folk and jazz genres, I try to use source elements from the folk repertoire while employing organizing principles from jazz. As I present these ideas on several instruments, and over rhythmic foundations in a slightly modernized folk idiom, I'll try to encourage the use of these ideas in contexts not necessarily associated with traditional music. The project seeks to encourage participation, and may possibly work as tutorial material.
This exposition focuses on portions of a Pd.D.-level project I finished in 2009. The original three-year undertaking was supported by the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme, hosted by NTNU, and was supervised by John-Pål Inderberg and Geir Egil Larsen. The current version was supported by HiNT University College.
A Play With Traditions
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Ingfrid Breie Nyhus
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
"A Play with Traditions - interpreting and performing between folk and pianism" is an artistic research doctorate project by pianist Ingfrid Breie Nyhus, at the Norwegian Programme of Artistic Research & the Norwegian Academy of Music 2011-2016.
Ingfrid Breie Nyhus is a performer within classical and contemporary interpretation and folk musical tradition. In this project, she explored musical possibilities in the tension field between art music's and folk music's performance traditions. She investigated similarities and differences in the traditions, and let them intertwine in her piano playing. This exposition is the reflection of the project, on artistic processes, contexts and considerations.
The Palestinian music-making experience in the West Bank, 1920s to 1959: Nationalism, colonialism, and identity
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Issa Boulos
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Research by Issa Boulos.
Before 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. During the first half of the twentieth century, Palestinian music evolved as a reflection of the social, cultural, and political evolution of Palestinians. Palestinian music-making evolved exponentially resulting in the expansion of various folk tunes into shaʿbī songs, the creation of the Palestinian qaṣīda song genre, new compositions of instrumental music for traditional and Western music formations, the establishment of choirs and children music programing, and active engagement in composing in the styles of the dominant Egyptian genres of the time as well as muwashshaḥāt.
In 1948, the vast majority of Palestinians were displaced, and musicians found themselves at the frontier of implementing new political and cultural visions in the countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Therefore, the continuation of the musical narrative in the West Bank did not seem attainable. By the early 1950s, Palestinian musicians and intellectuals developed a vocabulary that reflected the topography, scenery, culture, dialects, and history of al-Mashriq, one that is independent of Egypt’s. Their input, intuition, experience, and convictions of various Palestinian musicians helped to make the music scene in Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan what they are today.
Gian Majidi Singing Journey
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Gigi Gian
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Who am I? Kuka minä olen? Do I have any answer for this? I do not know yet and maybe whole of this long trip will remain the same. Uncertainty will be the cause and the result.
Should I try to be someone else or something else? Can I do that? How? What's happened to me? Why I am here and now?
This is question which i am looking to give some answer. If I do not know who I am, how you want to know about me?
I give you some pictures and feelings to make you happy about me, to make you at ease about me. let's walk and recall some memories together.
I have been writing poems and novels, screenplays and theaters, I was writing about music and movies. I have been playing and acting. I have loved performances and always communicating with people.
This research aims to combine my two artistic identities as a Chinese zither (古筝) player and as a classical singer. After researching, interpreting and analyzing two art song cycles from the 20th century, 5 Poems of Ancient China and Japan by Charles Griffes and Songs of Autumn (秋之歌) by Zhongrong Luo (罗忠镕), I integrate Chinese traditional music forms, ornamentation and instrumentation into my vocal performance. The methodology includes literature review, expert interview, internet media review, score analysis, language analysis and experimental music practice. The outcomes highlight my approach of incorporating inspiration from zither music and folk singing styles into the art song cycles, while also addressing the ethical considerations encountered throughout the research process.open exposition comments (0)
It would be more than reductive to say that art is not created in a vacuum. Simply said, all art exists in a context, and said context includes medium, genre, style, and idiom, amongst other things. In the realm of Western music, much insight has been given regarding quotation, and less so regarding subtler applications of stylistic, generic, and idiomatic thought in composition. So, if all music exists in a specific context, how can composers creatively account for context in their compositions? This research seeks to answer this question by outlining methodologies via analysis of relevant works. Given the background and musical focus of the researcher, this research predominantly focuses on musical works that adapt or interact with Latin-American folkloric music and traditions, with many works dealing specifically with Venezuelan and Cuban folklore.open exposition comments (1)
This exposition articulates tacit knowledge in processes associated with contemporary Traditional music practice in Scotland. Using a case study experiment and a series of workshop performances recorded in 2008, I examine the processes, communication and performance strengths of four leading Traditional and cross-genre creative musicians. In particular, examples of in-performance communication and collaboration emerge.open exposition comments (0)
TRADITIONING, DISSOLVING: What does 'traditioning' mean, what can the 'traditioned' become? On exploring rules and possible spaces in tradition and creation. To Ingfrid Breie Nyhus, the apparently impossible combination of folk music and grand piano, is a creatively generative musical situation. The rules of the 'slått' tradition are transposed to a new space in the grand piano, and the rules of the grand piano are destabilized in the meeting with the 'slått'. This exposition unfolds questions, reflections and new questions, from a longer process with the music "Slåttepiano".open exposition comments (0)
“Searching for the Siren” explores contemporary vocal approaches that mirror the aesthetics and the contemporary perception of defining the elements of Beauty. Specifically, three main thematics are researched: 1) The Folk Voice, which explores how folk elements and timbres enter in classical and popular music, 2) The Extended Voice, which describes the use of extended vocal techniques with reference to technical and physical aspects of timbral contrasts, vocal fry, scream and inhalation phonation, 3) The Absent, Transformed and Replaced Voice which occurred with the technological development. Ends with conclusions around the definition of the mythical creature of the Siren and its relation to the human voice. Every aspect includes personal views, works, performances and syllogisms.open exposition comments (0)
"A Play with Traditions - interpreting and performing between folk and pianism" is an artistic research doctorate project by pianist Ingfrid Breie Nyhus, at the Norwegian Programme of Artistic Research & the Norwegian Academy of Music 2011-2016. Ingfrid Breie Nyhus is a performer within classical and contemporary interpretation and folk musical tradition. In this project, she explored musical possibilities in the tension field between art music's and folk music's performance traditions. She investigated similarities and differences in the traditions, and let them intertwine in her piano playing. This exposition is the reflection of the project, on artistic processes, contexts and considerations.open exposition comments (0)
Who am I? Kuka minä olen? Do I have any answer for this? I do not know yet and maybe whole of this long trip will remain the same. Uncertainty will be the cause and the result. Should I try to be someone else or something else? Can I do that? How? What's happened to me? Why I am here and now? This is question which i am looking to give some answer. If I do not know who I am, how you want to know about me? I give you some pictures and feelings to make you happy about me, to make you at ease about me. let's walk and recall some memories together. I have been writing poems and novels, screenplays and theaters, I was writing about music and movies. I have been playing and acting. I have loved performances and always communicating with people.open exposition comments (0)