In creative collaboration

A breakthrough book in the emergent fields of improvisation and cultural theory, The Other Side of Nowhere conveys the spirit and energy of an experimental celebration. The volume is divided into four sections: writings of musicians about improvising; examinations of inter- and cross-cultural dialogue; discussions of social practice and identity; and essays about collaborative dissonance. The 17 essays present jazz improvisation as a cultural practice with far-reaching ramifications. Music is treated not merely as an artistic phenomenon, but as a social force with the power to effect substantial change among people of marginalized races, genders, sexualities and ethnicities. The collection argues that there is a distinctive relationship between the emergence of free jazz, the desire for social justice and activist practices. The Other Side of Nowhere is a groundbreaking book that offers multiple perspectives on the art of jazz improvisation - it will inspire readers to create, collaborate and dissent.

https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/esc_english_studies_in_canada/v031/31.2borshuk.pdf

The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue (review)

The voice and vocalizing subjects have long been a discussed in philosophical, cultural
and critical studies circles as places in which meaning lives and is conveyed. In recent
years, through developments in musicology, artistic research and autoethnography the
bodies of performers have taken on renewed significance for knowledge production.
The subjectivities involved in the realization of musical works are now being unpacked
and traditional notions of objectivity and concrete meaning as conveyed by musical
texts, have eroded.
Voicing Subjectivity argues for vocal subjectivity as a site for exploration and experiment
in practice-based, artistic research. It queries whether a conscious negotiation of
performer subjectivity makes for stronger practice and realizations in new vocal music?
The thesis presents two projects, realizing five new and recent notated works for voice.
The researcher performs and problematizes her multiple realizations of Helmut
Lachenmann’s Got Lost (2008), Jeanette Little’s Mechanical Bride (2013), Alexander
Garsden’s [ja] Maser (2014), James Rushford’s The fabric of Wind (2014) and Anthony
Pateras’ Prayer for Nil (2014).
Informed by and situated within literature from subjectivity studies, interdisciplinary
voice studies, music-history and professional vocal practice the author describes her
artistic research through three stages: preparation, performance and recording. The
exegesis fleshes out issues of embodiment, the indiscrete subject, technologized voice
and inter-subjectivity through an active performer’s practice in a mixed-methodological
framework that integrates elements from artistic research and auto-ethnography. By
applying a considered methodological structure and actively focusing the lens through
which problem-solving takes place, the author demonstrates how the conscious
negotiation of subjectivity enables better understanding of practice and makes the site
of knowledge production, the living subject of the author, a site that is fit to purpose.

Voicing subjectivity: Artistic Research in the realization of new Vocal Music

Experimental Music Since 1970

As the title suggests, Women of Note: The Rise of Australian Women Composers provides a sumptuous feast of facts, anecdotes, struggles and biographical information pertaining to selected women comp...

Women of Note: The Rise of Australian Women Composers

This research inquiry is firmly situated within the field of artistic research, where new knowledge about
and within practice is gained. There are two equally weighted submission components: one being a series
of sound files containing recordings of four recent Australian works for solo viola and related sonic data;
the other this exegesis, which provides a context for understanding and unpacking the interpretive
decisions housed in the recordings. The four works included in the research are: Liza Lim Amulet (1992),
James Rushford Untitled (2012), Helen Gifford Desperation (2014) and Lisa Illean Cranes (2016, revised
2017). With each work, a particular experience stood out: learning, commissioning, performing, and recording
a work. These became sites for investigation; problems to solve, choices to decipher, and musical decisions
to consider.
Analysis from the performer’s perspective became the potential medium through which the research
could be expressed. Recent musical analysis literature that attempts to express elements of the score in
the context of performance are limited in their ability to capture certain aspects of the performance by
their abstract relationship to the site for analysis. In response to this gap in the literature, a goal of this
research is to facilitate discourse on performance analysis and present a model of analysis that speaks to
processes of the performer. This research argues that performance analysis is to be enacted by the
performer, expressing their knowledge and experience of the score in the performance context.
Specifically, a performance analysis of Lisa Illean’s Cranes (2016-17) in this exegesis is an embodied analysis
that examines knowledge of the score that can only be to known to the performer through performing
the score in real time.
Examining creative processes undertaken by the performer as they work towards an interpretation reveals
the ways in which the performer controls, manipulates and theorises elements of the score towards a
performance. Further to this, the performer is in constant negotiation through their relationship with their
instrument, the score, the composer, and the performance context. This can often lead to questions on
how to navigate issues of authority and authenticity in a performance practice, as the performer
determines what gives their practice meaning. When these experiences are contextualised and enter a
reflective space, hierarchies are observed, strategies are developed, and greater understanding is gained.

Phoebe Catherine Green

Papers

Inside the performer's process: Exploring four Australian works for the viola through recordings, analysis, and reflection