The project expands and explores artistic possibilities related to conducting, as the title of the project reflects.
The underlying motivation for these expansions is a wish to include a broader range of listening modes into the conducting situation and into the expressions during a symphonic concert. So the deepest motivation is increased listening and the result is a post-conducting practice.
One very important aspect of the listening is the creative aspect.
The creative aspect and the relational aspects are dimensions that are closely linked together and these are continuously explored during the Meditations on Listening project. The creative aspect and the feeling of agency are also closely linked together (see the text Fluctuations of agency for more on that persepective)
The project can be seen as a development from the traditional conductor-composer relationship I am used to through my professional experience as a conductor, where the situation is that the composer has all the creative agency and the conductor takes over when the score is finished, to an artistic practice where the conductor is either a co-composer or in other ways takes part in the process of creating the piece. Very relevant artistic research in this area is percussionist Jennifer Torrence’s project: Rethinking the Performer: Towards a Devising Performance Practice (Torrence 2018) where she explores how the performer can move from mere interpreters of a composer’s work to become active contributors to the piece itself through creative processes between the composer and the performer. She uses the terminology Interpreter - Adviser - Deviser relating to her model of the performer's role in the composer-performer collaboration:
Interpreter- where the composer has the creative authority and the performer “realizes” the work. The score is primary
Adviser- a dialogical model where the performer offers input, suggestions, or modifications, though the composer retains final authority.
Deviser - The performer and composer co-create and the authorship is shared. The score is secondary
This is a very helpful model for me to refer to and it simplifies the explenations of the creative collaborations.
I would say that in orchestra music, the possibilites for co-creation between performers and composer are more challenging than in solo or chamber music settings, but not at all impossible, which my project also shows.
Some of the challenges are:
The scores of orchestral music are rich and complex. To really use the sonic possibilities inherent in the orchestra one needs quite a lot of sonic organization.
The situation for the conductor is that she leads a group of many people, the musican's attention must be used wisely to minimize waiting time. This together with the costs involved means that the time of a tutti rehearsal must be held to a minimum.
In the project Meditations on Listening I searched for ways to include co-creation with the orchesta musicians based on the timeframe and model we had.
For future artistic research projects with Symphony Orchestras (I hope there will be many) it would be relevant to think about other ways of rehearsing that makes it possible to include also other processes of co-creation with the musicians. For instance to devide the orchestra into smaller groups in the work process and work over some time.
It seems to me that the Meditations on Listening- project is unique in an artistic research context in how it explores the creative and expressive possibilities of conducting in a symphonic setting.
The doctoral thesis of Thomas Robert Moore: Redefining the Conductor's role in new Music Ensembles (Moore 2022) offers insight into the development of the conductor's performative role in new music during the last seven decades.
He does this through performing works by composers who through their art problematize or develops the conductor's role in the pieces. This can be e.g. by implementing choreographical, scenographical or theatrical elements.
Moore uses the expression "curated conductor" (curated by the composer). Moore's research and the artistic outcome is highly interesting work, but the conductor's role is still within the traditional composer-performer relationship where the condoctor is the interpreter.
In the Meditation on Listening project the conductor is part of the creative processes of making the pieces and the act of conducting itself is explored artistically from within, from the conductor herself.
You can read about the creative collaborations with the composers Hilmar Thordarson and Maja S. K. Ratkje and the video artis Anne Marthe Dyvi on the pages about the works.
About my creative relationships with the musicians in the project.
My relation to the musicians in the whole artistic research project differs quite a lot to a traditional conductor-musician relationship.
Mostly through the intended inclusion of the musicians creative agency. From the extreme version in the project Resonant Silence, where I interacted with the musicians but where my leader role was almost gone, to the project Hrafntinna/Black Obsidian where I had a clear leader role in the form of a co-composer and conductor-dancer on stage and with much more impact on the process and result. Again based on Torrence’s model I was an adviser in Resonant Silence, and in Hrafntinna/Black Obsidian I was a deviser.
A similarity in these two experimental projects was that the musicians had in both cases much to say in how the compositions turned out.
In the Meditations on Listening concert I worked with professional orchestra musicians. I used a lot of time to think about how I could include them in the creative process without it being too complicated, too overwhelming or too chaotic. After all we had a very short rehearsal period, monday-tuesday from 10:00-14:00 and wednesday: General rehearsal from 10:00-13:00 and concert at 19:00.
A variety of roles and artistic expressions
In the Meditation on Listening project as a whole, I take on a wide range of roles from being the interpreter ( In Pauline Hall’s piece) to different versions of adviser and deviser to the extreme opposite where I am the only composer in the piece "Coloring Echoes".
There are also multiple art forms involved; visual art, dance, choreography, performance and I take on the role as video artist and performance artist in the piece "Being Conducted By Tho Ocean", video editor of Thorbjörg Jonsdottirs video art in "Black Obsidian Suite", Visual editor and choreographer/composer in Choreographical Flowers and performance/conceptual artist in Arvo Pärt "Silentium".
No wonder it was hard to explain to the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and the administration who was the creator of the pieces.
The catalogue system the orchestra uses can actually only add one composer, so the information about co-composers can not be visible for the musicians internally in their digital system.
This points to the title again- "a development towards a post-conducting practice" where I can move from one role to the other, and one artistic expression and one art form is as natural as the other.
The result is a variety of artistic expressions, encouraging different listening modes for the audience and for the performers.