Research Catalogue

research expositions

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  Redefining the Conductor's Role in New Music Ensembles - Doctoral Thesis, University of Antwerp and Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp (ARIA) (last edited: 2022) author(s): Thomas Robert Moore This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Over the last seven decades, the role of the conductor has evolved in new music ensembles that perform integrated concerts. It was problematized by John Cage; doubled (or split) by Charles Ives, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Mark Applebaum; manipulated by Thierry De Mey, Simon Steen-Andersen, and Stefan Prins; instrumentalized by Alexander Schubert, Alexander Khubeev, Michael Maierhof, and Pieter Matthynssens; and deployed tactically by Serge Verstockt, Jessie Marino, and Carl Rosman. For these composers and artistic directors and others in their genre, the presence of the conductor is no secondary phenomenon of the music, by an affirmative and active choice to deploy one to meet specific artistic and/or socioeconomic needs. The systematic study of this relatively new and developing situation allowed me to find tools and methods for forming the required piece-specific performance practices with the aim of better functioning as a tactical and curated conductor.
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  Fair Games (last edited: 2022) author(s): Thomas Robert Moore This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  The authors of Defragmentation: Curating Contemporary Music (Darmstäder Beiträge zur Neuen Musik, 2018) all by (un)spoken agreement appeared to take for granted that nothing in new music curation can be taken for granted. In other words, all aspects of any given event were fair game. They suggested that not only could the choice in pieces, soloists, conductors, and ensembles be (re)tooled, but even site-specific aspects, roles of the musicians and audience, and even value regimes could be instrumentalized to fit the artistic need of the curator. Dorthee Richter, by way of introducing the bundle, proposed that curation should be a ‘practice that is deeply involved in the politics of display, politics of site, politics of transfer and translation, and regimes of visibility’. If we understand politics as, ‘the total complex of relations between people living in society’ (Merriam-Webster), then Richter suggests that every thinkable way people relate can, and perhaps should, be considered. Curators should reflect on how relationships in our world are displayed, the interplay involved on site (e.g. the history of specific concert venues), the participation (or lack thereof) of an audience, the participant’s ability to understand, enjoy, and be entertained (or not), and even the audience’s and presenter’s perceived position in society and how that interplays in concert. We, a performer-researcher, a culture-sociologist, and a musicologist, will rearticulate this premise, applying Boris Groys’ philosophy of care to examine curatorial practices. We will question the curator’s central role and probe any shifts in power between festival directors, receptive venues, and performing ensembles. And finally, drawing on Pascal Gielen’s previous research into fine arts curation and Jennifer Walshe’s piece splendor_solis.wav (2022), we will delve into the influence ‘flying’ curators have on artistic, social, and financial stability of individual musicians and ensembles.
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