Case Studies

Case Study 1

Learning and Participation in the Context of a Contemporary Music Ensemble

  • Nan­cy Evans, Edu­ca­tion Man­ag­er, Birm­ing­ham Con­tem­po­rary Music Group (RU / UK)

This talk will explore BCMG’s learn­ing and par­tic­i­pa­tion pro­gramme. The pro­gramme is built around the resources of the group (vir­tu­osic musi­cian­ship and links with com­posers) and reflects BCMG’s core val­ues of excel­lence, inno­va­tion and qual­i­ty rela­tion­ships. The pro­gramme con­sists of: an exten­sive pro­gramme of out-of-school and in-school com­po­si­tion work­shops; ground-break­ing fam­i­ly and schools con­certs; con­certs involv­ing young and non-pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians per­form­ing along­side BCMG musi­cians; play-throughs of works by uni­ver­si­ty and con­ser­va­toire stu­dents; com­mis­sion­ing new works for young lis­ten­ers and young per­form­ers; cre­at­ing learn­ing resources; and, a series of Insight events explor­ing the world of con­tem­po­rary music in more depth. The talk will also touch on BCMG’s pio­neer­ing indi­vid­ual donor and audi­ence devel­op­ment scheme Sound Invest­ment in which audi­ence mem­bers invest in new com­mis­sions. Nan­cy will share how the pro­gramme has evolved, how it works in part­ner­ship with oth­er organ­i­sa­tions, ongo­ing chal­lenges and future devel­op­ments. The talk will be illus­trat­ed by audio and video exam­ples of work.

Case Study 2

Série Hommage No 1: Claude Vivier

  • Pier­rette Gin­gras, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Société de musique con­tem­po­raine du Québec (Mon­tréal)

In the 2007–2008 sea­son, the Société de musique con­tem­po­raine du Québec cre­at­ed the new series ’Hom­mage’. This series aims to unite the cul­tur­al milieu around one com­pos­er with the goal of rec­og­niz­ing this com­pos­er with the stat­ue of ’nation­al trea­sure’. The first edi­tion of this series ded­i­cat­ed to Claude Vivi­er proved to be a great suc­cess: around 20 organ­i­sa­tions respond­ed to the call put out by the SMCQ by inte­grat­ing one of Vivier’s works into their artis­tic sea­son. The major accom­plish­ment of this project was Le grand jeu/La grande écoute which gave more than 13000 chil­dren in Que­bec the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cov­er the com­pos­er by lis­ten­ing to and play­ing one of his works in the class­room. The Hom­mage series demon­strates the extent to which diver­si­ty of the par­tic­i­pat­ing organ­i­sa­tions is a key com­po­nent to audi­ence development.

Case Study 3

Music From Scratch

  • Jer­ry Per­gole­si, Artis­tic Direc­tor, Con­tact Con­tem­po­rary Music (Toron­to)

Music From Scratch is a free, week­long sum­mer work­shop for youth pre­sent­ed by CONTACT con­tem­po­rary music in asso­ci­a­tion with Uni­ver­si­ty Set­tle­ment Music & Arts School. Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with and with­out musi­cal train­ing are engaged in the process of cre­at­ing music. The work­shop pro­vides a means for par­tic­i­pants to explore alter­na­tive ways to be cre­ative with music, that involves lis­ten­ing to their envi­ron­ment in a dif­fer­ent way, and to orga­nize their thoughts in new ways in order to con­vey their (musi­cal) mes­sage. Togeth­er, par­tic­i­pants in the work­shop, along with artists cre­ate works that explore their envi­ron­ment and per­son­al lives. Par­tic­i­pants are giv­en sev­er­al new tools with which they are now able to think cre­ative­ly in order to express their own realities.

Case Study 4

New Music and Community

  • Gilles Mot­tet, Com­pos­er / Direc­tor, Pourquoi pas…co-incidence? (Nice)

Thanks to the struc­ture of Pourquoi pas…..co-incidence?, an asso­ci­a­tion of com­posers and per­form­ers devot­ed to new music cre­ation which I found­ed in 2001, we could imag­ine and put in prac­tice dif­fer­ent forms of cre­ativ­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion to enable a large audi­ence to dis­cov­er music cre­ation and new music reper­toire. To reach this goal, we reg­u­lar­ly build part­ner­ships with local insti­tu­tion­al struc­tures such as muse­ums and media libraries. We aim to inte­grate our new music into the pro­gram­ming of nation­al cul­tur­al events that, orig­i­nal­ly, were not designed to accept this kind of work — events such as Journées du pat­ri­moine, Mars aux Musées, Nuit des Musée, among oth­ers. To these spe­cial places, we pro­vide the per­son­nel and tech­ni­cal resources need­ed to cre­ate site-spe­cif­ic com­mis­sioned works that make use of, or are con­nect­ed to, dif­fer­ent artis­tic and sci­en­tif­ic fields. Final­ly, we pro­pose ped­a­gog­i­cal actions such as meet­ings and debates with com­posers and musi­cians, new music res­i­den­cies open to the pub­lic, stu­dent work­shops on musi­cal prac­tices, and inter­ven­tions in schools.

Case Study 5

Composing For Young Musicians: Experiences with School Bands and Choirs

  • Allan Bell, Com­pos­er / Pro­fes­sor, Cal­gary Uni­ver­si­ty (Cochrane)

The ses­sion will focus upon prac­ti­cal approach­es to the chal­lenge of cre­at­ing adven­tur­ous music for per­for­mance by young musicians.

Case Study 6

Composing With Young Musicians

  • Tawnie Olson, Com­po­si­tion Instruc­tor, ACES Edu­ca­tion­al Cen­ter for the Arts (New Haven, USA)

Com­pos­ing With Young Musi­cians offers a win­dow into one approach to con­tem­po­rary com­po­si­tion ped­a­gogy by dis­cussing meth­ods used at the Edu­ca­tion­al Cen­ter for the Arts (ECA), an arts mag­net high school in New Haven, Con­necti­cut. The his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy of ECA and its music depart­ment will be sum­ma­rized briefly, and a pro­file of its stu­dents will be giv­en. Three key ele­ments of the com­po­si­tion cours­es at ECA will be dis­cussed: using con­tem­po­rary com­po­si­tions as mod­els, cre­at­ing frame­works that encour­age stu­dents to use new tech­niques while allow­ing them to main­tain styl­is­tic free­dom, and cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tions, per­for­mances and recog­ni­tion of stu­dent work. Exam­ples of assign­ments, stu­dent com­po­si­tions, and per­for­mances will be provided.

Case Study 7

The Importance of Music Education In Our Classroom

  • Ann La Plante, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Alliance for Cana­di­an New Music Projects

Ann La Plante details how the Alliance for Cana­di­an New Music Projects pro­duces their class­room projects, and due to its many years of under­tak­ing such endeav­ours, she can show us the extent to which such projects are impor­tant in the pub­lic school classroom.