Gravity and Breathing as an Integrated Musical Frame
(2025)
author(s): Halym Kim
published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
This artistic research explores a performance practice that integrates the phenomena of gravity and breathing as extensions of musical expression in improvisation. The aim is to develop a musical language that translates the qualities and characteristics of gravity and breath into sonic gestures, examining how they generate tension and release through both musical actions and silences.
The project draws inspiration from traditional Korean music and dance, in which an embodied awareness of gravity and breathing constitutes a foundational approach to performance and interpretation. These cultural references serve as a framework for rethinking musical practice and transcultural awareness. As part of the research process, I undertook studies in traditional Korean dance, the vocal tradition of Pansori, and the percussion instrument Soribuk to understand how gravity and breathing are communicated artistically, verbally, and methodologically across these three disciplines. Insights from this embodied practice were then translated into the context of Western contemporary improvisation.
The resulting concept is designed to enhance the performer’s awareness and is specifically conceived for a solo drum set context.
Craftmanship
(2025)
author(s): Kjell Tore Innervik
published in: Norwegian Academy of Music
This project identifies a shortcoming in the range and coherence of the language that musicians use, in particular the Norwegian instrumental traditional music (folk music), when they aim to communicate the craft elements of their practice.
The Craftmanship project identifies craft as deep knowledge that is a result of skills based activities that again result in tacit knowledge. This knowledge has traditionally been communicated between practitioners or from master to apprentice through a series of subtle cues, ideas or metaphors, which resist language – it is learned through experience and a form attunement between the participants.
The project therefore, proposes to develop a vocabulary, based on and drawn from a practitioner’s perspective, through the “languaging” of keywords, and a critique of scores in order to revitalise the transmission of this knowledge for a new generation of musicians. Furthermore, it proposes that when attunement happens, it facilitates profound moments in performances, where the musician and audience reach a tacit recognition. The project proposes that these moments, colloquially described as ‘Magic Moments’ are the aim of most musicians in performance situations. These moments are often dependent on social situations. The project aims to construct a framework for further investigation of the contexts within which these moments manifest themselves.
Craftmanship - blog
(2025)
author(s): Kjell Tore Innervik
published in: Norwegian Academy of Music
Blog presenting news and updates from the project 'Craftmanship', by Kjell Tore Innervik and Håkon Høgemo
"Inseparable": Music and Dance in a Cross-Disciplinary Practice
(2024)
author(s): Kalina Vladovska
published in: KC Research Portal
The following research observes the artistic creative process of a cross-disciplinary theatrical dance and percussion performance, called “Inseparable”. It discusses and analyses the process and methods behind the creation of the piece; the pros and cons of dance-percussion collaboration, and of working as a team of performer-creators; the involvement of a director; the creation of the final performance with a technical crew (light & sound); and the emergence of a mutual artistic language.
The cast includes Zaneta Kesik and Matija Franjes - two dancers (doubling as choreographers), and Joao Brito and Kalina Vladovska - two percussionists (doubling as composers), creating the narrative, dramaturgy, choreography and (some of the) music on their own. The director, Renee Spierings, was invited to be an external coach. Teus van der Stelt and Maurits Thiel - light and sound artists - took care of the final presentation. The four performances took place during and thanks to Muziekzomer Gelderland 2023 and were produced by Jarick Bruinsma.
Furthermore, in the research I discuss the social impact of the project's themes – technology addiction and human communication - and I examine a number of reactions and feedback from audience members.
The chosen form of presentation is a research exposition.
Performance as Device for Disorientation
(2024)
author(s): Jennifer Torrence
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
By its very nature, performance is precarious—there is always the chance that everything might fall apart. In an attempt to mitigate the discomfort of this unpredictability, many musicians develop strategies in the hope of holding the reins on the proverbial cart. But what if one chose not to maintain control and instead embraced the wild nature inherent to performance? What kinds of knowledge and aesthetic experiences might emerge in the inevitable moments of collapse? Drawing on her recent research in the project Performing Precarity, an extended collaboration with composer Simon Løffler, as well as concepts by Jack Halberstam and Sara Ahmed, percussionist/performer Jennifer Torrence meditates on the notion of performance as a device for disorientation—that is, performance as an embodied practice of rupture, of getting lost, and of undoing the order of things.
APPROACHING IMAGES: A Journey from Imagery to the Concrete
(2023)
author(s): Rui Braga Simões
published in: KC Research Portal
The piano is an instrument filled with endless possibilities, and an absurd amount of marvellous repertoire, but also has its downsides, namely its extremely complex mechanism: fingers activate a key, that moves a hammer, that hits a string. It’s a lot of steps from the moment you imagine a note and the moment you hear it, and the resulting sound isn’t always what we hope for. This instrument can be limited for the things that are asked from pianists, such as playing singing and legato lines. However, there are ways of getting over this limitation, and one of them is the use of Imagery, I.e., having a strong imagination of something else in order to do things that, in many occasions on a piano, are technically impossible.
In this artistic research I approach the concept of Musical Imagery and present an arrangement I made of Debussy’s Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut (from the second book of Images) for piano and percussion quartet, exploring the imagery elements I use in my practice and explaining how I turned them into something concrete, through the use of new layers added by the chosen instruments.
Soft to the Touch: Performance, Vulnerability, and Entanglement in the Time of Covid
(2021)
author(s): Jennifer Torrence
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
What is the nature of human touch and human contact in contemporary music performance, both in general and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? In a time when bodies must be kept at several meters distance, what comes of works which explicitly call for closeness, physical contact, and sharing? How might these works be interpreted differently in light of the COVID-19 pandemic? Percussionist and performer Jennifer Torrence reflects on the impact of the pandemic on her artistic practice and on her research as part of the project entitled Performing Precarity, which seeks to explore the inherent risks in performance when musicians and audiences are entangled in codependent structures. In light of COVID-19, this exposition attempts to unfold and trace modes of vulnerability in contemporary music performance—from human contact via eye contact and physical touch, to the precarious negotiation of shared space—and to reflect on how such encounters might breed new understandings and knowledge.
Why are my hands in pain
(2020)
author(s): Helgi Þorleiksson
published in: Research Catalogue
This project focuses on how percussionists get injured while playing. Six percussionists were interviewed focusing on their injury history and practice habits. This information was brought to medical professionals who helped decipher how the percussionists or their decisions, led them to sustaining a playing related injury. Finally, we compare their stories to current recovery science to see if there are some things we can learn about recovery and preventing injuries.
Percussion Theatre: a body in between
(2019)
author(s): Jennifer Torrence
published in: Norwegian Academy of Music
What does the musician become when sound and instrumental thinking are no longer privileged as the foundation of a musician's practice? In what ways does an emphasis on the musician's body cause music to approach art forms such as theatre and performance? After a generation of pioneering work from Mauricio Kagel, Dieter Schnebel, John Cage and many others, where is the theatrical and the performative in music today? How do its recent developments shape, alter, constitute a musician's artistic practice? Through her research, Jennifer Torrence argues that this type of music demands the musician assume a different understanding and relation to their instrument and therefore a different relation to their body. This relation calls for new ways of making and doing (new artistic practices) that foreground the body as a fundamental performance material. Through an emphasis on the body, the musician emerges as a performer.
This exposition is a reflection on the research project Percussion Theatre: a body in between. This project is comprised of a collection of new evening-length works that approach the theatrical and performative in contemporary music performance. These works are created with and by composers Wojtek Blecharz, Carolyn Chen, Neo Hülcker, Johan Jutterström, Trond Reinholdtsen, François Sarhan, and Peter Swendsen. The exposition contains reflections on recent developments in contemporary music that mark a mutation of the executing musician into a co-creating performer, as well as images, artefacts, videos, and texts that unfold the process of creating and performing the work that constitutes this project. The ambition of this exposition is that through the exposure of a personal artistic practice an image of a larger field may come into focus.
Translation of Middle Eastern & Balkan rhythms and meters in my set up, consisting of darbuka, cajon, bendir attached to full drum-set
(2016)
author(s): Ioannis Rizopoulos
published in: Codarts
This paper focuses on the structure of a practical method that facilitates the transition from traditional elements towards the modern expression of performing on percussion. The primal aim behind this idea is to enrich the performer’s experience by, not only exercising on odd meters and rhythms seen in traditional music of the Middle East and the Balkans, but also using a variety of instruments on the same time for getting the required acoustic outcome. On the other hand the main instrument on which the full combination of the percussion-set was based, the drum-set, is giving the perfect match on a try-out to combine different music practices of the East and the West. Conducting a study like that sets the start for experimentation on combinations of music styles and their representative instruments.
The scope and significance of this research is described in the first section, highlighting the importance of the research question under examination in its final phase. In addition possible ways and primal findings that helped on finalizing the build up of a distinct set-up are commented. Technical matters leading to the desired musical outcome are outlined in the second section, along with the important aspects discovered during the implementation of the study. Results, findings and limitations of the study are described below. The next section, which forms the bulk of the paper, turns to the
description of the data under examination, structured into the 3 intervention cycles of research.
Sections 4, 5 and 6 all discuss in more detail the technical, notative procedure used and how it was transformed, during the research period, in order to strengthen the significance and application of the approach under examination; basically how to transfer Middle Eastern and Balkan rhythms and meters on a set up that consists of M. Eastern percussion and the drum set. The paper ends with a brief conclusion and the more detailed description of the resulted methodology.
Proposing Live Electronics as an Alternative to Larger Performance Set-Ups
(2014)
author(s): Mario Garcia Cortizo
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Mario García Cortizo
Main Subject: Classical and Contemporary Percussion Research Coaches: Anna Scott and Richard Barrett
Title of Research: Proposing Live Electronics as an Alternative to Larger Performance Set-Ups
Research Question:
How can the inclusion of live electronics reduce required equipment while increasing performer efficiency?
Research Process:
After deciding on the topic of my research, I began reading and collecting all kinds of information related to the historical relationship between the arts and artists during major social and financial crises of the 20th Century. This included books, websites, journal and magazine articles, and museum exhibitions.
In a practical sense, during the first year of the research process I was mainly focused on trying out different things by experimenting with live electronics both in improvised and concert music. For my second year, I have commissioned a new piece involving percussion and live electronics to be performed by composition student Siamak Anvari. I will also be the second person ever to play Hugo Morales’ piece 150pF, “for body capacitance and amplification system.” This piece involves a new instrument that I built myself, consisting of four jack connectors that are split into a four-channel system. As a complement for the program, I am doing a reduction of Frederic Rzewski’s
Coming Together for one single player and an actress.
Summary of Results:
Throughout this text we have seen different proposals that have come out of limitations faced by artists during crisis periods: where creativity is forced to develop in very significant ways in order to keep creating pieces, performances - art that riches everybody, regardless of culture, politics, age, or other aspects. These limitations have provided artists with a lot of new instruments, technologies and techniques: tools that have helped composers and performers to develop new languages and frameworks within which to organize many different materials.
Is very important to point out that the use of non-conventional instruments and live electronics can be considered when there are limitations, but we do not have to use these resources just because of the presence of a limitation, but rather as a part of an on-going research process that leads us to these resources as part of a particular creative solution. After going through all the practical examples experimented with and contained in this research, we can conclude that live electronics and non-conventional instruments are indeed an alternative to larger performance set-ups, not only when the economic situation is unfavorable, but even as a matter of taste.
Blog presenting news and updates from the project 'Craftmanship', by Kjell Tore Innervik and Håkon Høgemoopen exposition comments (0)