Composition, Alternative Performance and Performance Art Workshop

Led by leading figures in contemporary music with interest and practice overlapping with experimental performance art, this new course aims to broaden the perspectives of open-minded composers and performers. Rather than dividing participants into categories, it seeks only to encourage the creation of new works.

Starting with an alternative narrative of historical performance art (traced through Dada, Bauhaus, and Fluxus) and how it shapes current experimental musical practice, participants will then work collaboratively in the forging of original works. Topics to be covered include: different approaches to instruments; different roles in the creative process for performers and composers; fluidity between graphic, tablature and traditional notation; considering devised, composed and improvisation practice as equal stimuli in the creation of new music.

From Larry Goves, course director:
“CAPPA is intended to be a composition, performance and new music course that interprets these things very broadly. I have felt, in certain circumstances, that new music making associated with technology, acoustic instruments, improvisation and sound art (to name a few areas) are very separate. Add in music that emerges or in some way connects to different traditions (historical performance art, ‘classical’ performance and composition, electronica, folk music etc.) then this can, again in some cases, create separation.

What, then, brings this course together (as it is not intended to be ‘any kind of music in any possible circumstances’)? In this case the unifying characteristic is a desire to experiment in the creation of new music for performance and consider your practice in the context of historical and contemporary experimental music. The decision to contextualise this with a historical performance-art narrative is partly because this is emblematic of experimental creative practice, partly because it seems increasingly relevant to new music making, partly because it provides a dramatic contrast to the western ‘classical music’ narrative that is probably (and understandably) most associated with Snape Maltings and partly because performance art is, for the most part, inherently interdisciplinary.

So CAPPA is a course for makers. If you make new music and you’re interested in experimentation, then this is likely for you.”

13 – 24 August 2018
Snape Maltings, the home of Aldeburgh Music (UK)

Involved Artists
Larry Goves – composer
Hanna Hartman – sound artist & composer
Tim Parkinson – composer
Amber Priestley -composer
James Saunders – composer
Juliet Fraser – soprano
and members of The House of Bedlam

The workshop will host as participant Maja Linderoth, in the framework of her ULYSSES-Journey.