Projects

Amplified piano / Amplified pianist

Johann Vacher

The appearance of microphones and loudspeakers allowed composers to explore new musical territories. Until then, grinding noises coming from mechanic of piano or sounds emitted by the pianist were only perceived as disturbing the performance. With the development of amplification, those noises have become sounds that composers could use in a musical discourse. 

New pianistic techniques have appeared: inner and outer parts of the instrument are investigated with the hand or with various accessories, while, in turn, properties of these accessories are revealed through their use inside the piano. The pianist himself becomes a study object: he is asked to make amplified finger snaps or tongue clicks, he has to speak, to sing or to whistle in a kind of choreographed show. 

Live electronics have brought new steps of amplification, increasing virtuosity, filtering resonance, working on acoustic diffusion. The pianist can then interact and play along with live electronics, expanding the possibilities.

This research will be done from the performers’ perspective, but in collaboration with different composers for experimenting new amplified piano / pianist music.

Acoustic Feedback and Corporeality

Filipa Botelho

Acoustic Feedback and Corporeality is a research project situated at the crossroads of acoustic feedback composition and interactive performance practises that include movements of the performer on stage. Grounded on the assumption that neither sound nor movement can be composed or choreographed independently from each other, the central aim of the project is the study, design and development of new modes of interaction between sound and movement focusing on the role of the performer’s body and its multiple corporealities (sound producer, gestures, movement, presence). Methodologically, the project will develop several “experimental systems” (Rheinberger 1997) containing instruments, microphones, loudspeakers, light, spaces, sound, and video in order to generate unexpected but controlled sonic and visual events. More than a goal, acoustic feedback becomes one parameter among many others. Besides the doctoral dissertation, outputs will include performances, conference presentations, articles, web-based expositions, and a user-friendly booklet on acoustic feedback practises.

Hyperimpressions

Heloisa Amaral

The relationship between performer and musical work has shifted focus in the last fifty years. 

Romanticizing Brahms

Anna Scott

Though they are generally regarded as invaluable traces of late-Romantic style, early twentieth-century recordings make for uncomfortable bedfellows with modern norms for the performance of certain nineteenth-century repertoires and the canonic identities protected by those norms. Nowhere is this truer than in Brahmsian spheres, where the version of Johannes Brahms communicated by the recordings of the Schumann-Brahms circle of pianists stands in stark contrast to constructions of his 'Classical' identity and its underlying aesthetic ideology of control.