Conference report: Doctors in performance, Tallinn, 1-3 September 2021

This report chronicles the author’s participation in the Doctors in Performance (DiP) Festival Conference, September 2021, at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Tallinn. It is the fourth edition of DiP since its inauguration in 2014 at the Sibelius Academy, Uniarts Helsinki. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe in early 2020, most conferenceshave been either postponed, cancelled or held online. This Conference is one of the first to be held as an in-person event as Europe starts to move towards a post-pandemic period. Some participants gathered in person (including the author), while parallel online participation was also enabled as a hybrid event. This report records the conference events as DiP enters into maturity with a focus on artistic research and music performance. It also describes the author’s impressions regarding issues of ‘liveness’ in varied categories, including spoken presentations, music performances, their online equivalents, live or prerecorded presentations and online or live participations.

Taitelija – tiedon alkuperäisasukas?

Lukijalle.

Resonance. (Re)forming an Artistic Identity through Intercultural Dialogue and Collaboration

This artistic doctoral research examines how the third space emerging from intercultural dialogue and transcultural collaboration can be a catalyst for new musical discoveries, intercultural humility, and the (re)forming of artistic identities. The body of this project is centred around three doctoral concerts, a CD/LP recording, and a documentary film which took place between 2016 and 2021. In addition, I draw on the embodied experience of a five-year period that I spent living and collaborating with musicians and dancers in Tanzania and Zambia prior to the doctoral project.As a double bass player, multi-instrumentalist, and composer, I place myself in a series of different musical and multi-arts contexts, engaging in dialogue with musicians, dancers, and visual artists from Brazil, Colombia, Estonia, Finland, France, Madagascar, Mexico, Poland, Sápmi, Tanzania, the UK and Zambia. Various solo, duo, and ensemble settings act as case studies to examine how this process takes place, the new knowledge gained from the collaborations and their resulting artistic outcomes, and the effects of intercultural dialogue, collaboration, and co-creation on my own artistic identity. The instruments and forms of artistic expression used by my collaborators include the Brazilian berimbau, Chinese guzheng, dance, live electronics, experimental instrument making, Finnish Saarijärvi kantele, Sámi joik, vocals, percussion, live visuals, image manipulation, animation, photography and film.The key concepts that I investigate in this research are: artistic identity, global citizenship, hybridity, interculturalism, intercultural humility, liminality, third space theory, and resonance, the latter being viewed both as a physical phenomenon and as an approach to thinking about the ways in which we connect with the world around us. This research contributes to new knowledge and understandings in the areas of artistic identity formation, intercultural collaboration and interculturalism in music education through the interweaving of artistic processes, audio, video, photographs, artistic outcomes and text.Findings emerge in terms of new musical discoveries that surface from the dynamic third space created through transcultural collaboration; the expanding and deepening of musicianship through intercultural dialogue and collaboration; the interconnected nature of interculturalism in music and its reliance on openness, empathy, dialogue and constantnegotiation with sonic material, people and place; and the crucial role of fluidity and resonance in forming a personal artistic identity.Further research outcomes include new techniques and the expansion of the sonic palette of the double bass, enabled by developing custom-made attachments, preparations and electronic manipulation. The complete scope of this doctoral project includes four artistic components (three concerts and a recording), a documentary film and an artistic doctoral thesis comprising two peer-reviewed articles and an integrative chapter, all housed within the main multi-media exposition, Resonance: (Re)forming an Artistic Identity through Intercultural Dialogue and Collaboration.

Rakenteiden törmäys. Taiteellinen toimintatutkimus Teatterikorkeakoulun ja Sibelius-Akatemian yleisökontaktikurssista

Colliding structures: Artistic action research on audience contact course at the Sibelius and Theatre Academies. This article focuses on a period between 2018–2019 when students from the Sibelius Academy were invited to take part in an audience contact course offered by the Theatre Academy. The experiment was carried out as an artistic activity analysis. During the course, theatre and music students formed working groups which encountered people from different habitation units and organized art workshops for them. Based on their experiences, the groups prepared performances which they performed in the health care and social security units as well as in prisons. We focus especially on what we term ‘structural collisions’ taking place between different practices: firstly, we examine the collision between Uniarts students and reception center workers in organizing art workshops. Another structural collision we discuss rose from the collaboration between different academies. We consider how representatives of different art genres discuss the work concept of a collaboration-based performance and how different work concepts define the agency of the artists within a work-group-based artistic process. The aim is to offer visions on how the Theatre Academy and the Sibelius Academy might develop collaborative communal art education at the Uniarts Helsinki.

Kollaasista montaasiin, taidemuodosta toiseen

Magda Dragu’s monograph analyses the uses and development of collage and montage in the early avantgarde. Dragu analyses how these techniques were intermedially transposed from one art form into others, and discusses their use in painting, photography, cinema, literature and music. Although the emphasis is on the formal analysis of these techniques, the study also examines in detail the diverse ways that they were used to produce meanings.

Agogiikka ja rekisteröiminen esittäjän keinovaroina saksalaisessa urkumusiikissa

The subject of my doctoral studies is the use of agogics in German organ music between the 17th and the 19th century. The repertoire of my five concerts proceeded chronologically in order to demonstrate the evolution of agogics. In my written thesis, I investigate my methods of choosing stops when performing German romantic music.

In search for hidden repertoire gems: A performer´s approach to Russian and Soviet clarinet music

In her doctoral research, Anne Elisabeth Piirainen sheds light on a little known aspect of the clarinet repertoire – clarinet music from Russia and the former Soviet Union. This performance-based research gives insight into a large variety of very valuable yet quite forgotten compositions with a special focus on clarinet works with Jewish themes. The thesis is published as a website and includes an extensive clarinet composition database that aims to close the research gap on this topic.

Helppojen ajatusten takaa

Lukijalle.

Den kvinnliga sopranen i barockrepertoaren

The artistic doctoral project of soprano Kajsa Dahlbäck is in two parts. The theme of the concert series is “The female soprano within the baroque repertoire 1600–1750” and that of the thesis is “Singing-in-the-world – a phenomenological study on the singer’s inner work”. In her concerts, Dahlbäck has performed music from different parts of Europe and particularly from communities with female singers, such as for instance Italian nun convents, Vivaldi’s time at La Pietà in Venice and the court of Swedish Queen Christina in Stockholm and Rome. In her thesis, Dahlbäck shares insights from her experience as a singer specializing in early music as well as the genre’s generally intimate concert and rehearsal atmosphere. Experience texts from rehearsals and concerts have been mirrored against phenomenological theories. The practice-based triadic concept of body–breath– mind is linked to the theoretical singing-in-the-world. Body–breath–mind is the foundation for singing-in-the-world, a synthesis of the phenomenological tradition of Heidegger’s being- in-the-world (in-der-Welt-sein), Merleau-Ponty’s being toward-the-world (suis à) and in recent years Škof and Berndtson’s breathing-in-the-world.

Kohti kriittistä editiota. Musiikkifilologinen analyysi Leevi Madetojan ensimmäisen sinfonian käsikirjoituslähteistä

Leevi Madetoja’s (1887–1947) first symphony in F major, opus 29 (1916) was not printed during the composer’s lifetime. All performances of the work until the 1980s were played from handwritten orchestra parts. The printed score by Fazer from 1984 is riddled with numerous omissions, wrong pitches and mistakes in articulation and dynamics, and it seems to be a hybrid of the composer’s two manuscripts from 1916 and 1943 by an unknown editor. By today’s standards, the result is questionable, considering that the manuscripts were separated by 27 years. This article takes a look at the manuscript sources of Madetoja’s first symphony and is part of a larger project producing critical editions of Madetoja’s orchestral works. My research question is, what are the manuscript sources of Madetoja’s first symphony, and how are they related? I describe the autographs and handwritten orchestra parts and locate them in the source chain using genealogical reasoning and biographical information. I point out which orchestra materials and autographs are connected and highlight essential differences between the manuscripts from the point of view of the critical edition. Finally, I consider which of the autographs would be best suited as the principal source of the new critical edition.