Workshops

I lead creative music workshops, particularly focusing on the dynamics of group interaction and making music with games.

Workshop at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Japan, 2023)

In July I spent a couple of weeks on tour with Noriko Okaku, across Kanazawa, Kyoto and Tokyo. In collaboration with the museum in Kanazawa, we held a week of activities including an installation, series of performances and workshops. In relation to some of the themes in our audiovisual piece That Long Moonless Chase / その長い月のない追跡, these activities focused on the processes of exchanging stories, involving various scenarios of human-human, human-computer, computer-computer interaction, in a playful way in which errors, misrememberings and oral exchanges gave rise to new creations and stories.

The participants shared some personal anecdotes of experiences in Kanazawa. These became the focus of a series of activities in pairs and as a whole group, in which the participants fed their stories into games and collaborative, rule-based interactions, which explored aspects of memory, rhythm, and different distillations of the stories, from their full forms to reducing to their most fundamental words and sonic elements.

In this workshop, I used techniques and activities that I’ve often used in compositions or group workshops, but for the first time we explored this in the context of storytelling, words and memory. Thanks to Noriko, the participants and the museum for exploring this with me.

Workshop and recording week with Better Days/Unlock Music, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2023

In April I was back with the brilliant folk at Better Days/Unlock Music creating some new pieces of music together. We had a fantastic day recording our compositions and improvisations in the studio - looking forward to hearing the recordings!

YSWN WIRED Rotherham, 2023

It’s great to be working alongside Mia Windsor for these WIRED sessions at Rotherham College: https://yorkshiresoundwomen.com/news/steel-yourself-wired-is-coming-to-rotherham/

Thursday 2 March then Thursdays (except for 6 & 13 April) until 18 May
5pm–6.30pm
Rotherham College, Town Centre Campus, Eastwood Lane, Rotherham S65 1EG

Workshop and performance with Better Days, Newcastle upon Tyne, February 2022

Risk Related Workshop with Radar, February 2020

AlgoMech Festival 19th May 2019

I had a great time leading this workshop at Access Space as part of AlgoMech Festival 2019. The brilliant group of participants that we had made this a lot of fun.

We explored how the algorithms that govern games can be transformed into musical pieces. I mapped the rules and procedures of games onto graphic and instructional scores, which we used to create new musical pieces during the workshop. Working with a mix of percussion, bells & hooters, we transformed numbers and graphic blueprints into performance pieces.

From the games of Hopscotch, Elastics and Rock Paper Scissors I extracted number procedures, patterns of choreography and algorithms. By assigning rules  or parameters to these aspects of games, we explored different strategies for interaction between performers, and for generating and composing with sounds. Read more here.

Music in Disorder, with Revoid Ensemble, Royal College of Music in Stockholm

I was invited to take part as a guest in Music in Disorder: Counterplay, Complexity and Collective Improvisation — an artistic research project established at Royal College of Music in Stockholm (funded by The Swedish Research Council and Stockholm University of the Arts). The project involved a series of research labs, artistic productions, concerts, public presentations and seminars during 2016-2018. 

Working with the Revoid Ensemble, we explored one of my methods for small-group improvisation, Cogs. I introduced these circular graphic scores as a way to focus on aspects of pattern, rhythmic communication and gameplay in improvisation. We then experimented with these scores in conjunction with the ensemble’s own methods, giving rise to some interesting results and food for thought for my own future work.

The Music in Disorder project has involved a great variety of interesting artists, and you can read more about it here.

RAL Space and Cornerstone Arts Centre 

Working with astrophysicist Chris Pearson, I collaboratively designed and delivered workshops in Oxfordshire primary schools, supported by Cornerstone Arts Centre (Didcot). We combined musical activities and games with a scientific exploration of the solar system, with inflatable planets, a human orrery, rhythm games and body percussion. As well as learning about our own solar system, the children created their very own exoplanets.

These exoplanets became the inspiration for the children’s original compositions for percussion, which they composed in groups of threes and fours. I then created a new piece, Oxfordshire Exoplanets, made up entirely from recordings of the children’s compositions. With so much great music to choose from, I had a lot of fun working with sounds, patterns and rhythms from the children’s work. I tried to keep a flavour of the musical ideas, planetary landscapes and imaginary worlds that the groups came up with. Here’s a couple of snippets to give you an idea.

Forgetting to Remember

In partnership with Minerva Scientifica, the project drew from researchers across the faculties of medical science, agriculture and engineering, and humanities and social science at Newcastle University.

This culminated in an event at the Sage Gateshead, in which five pairs of female identifying scientists and composer/performers led activities for young people from schools in the region, based upon the collaborative work they had undertaken.

I collaborated with chemical engineer Dr Paola Meynet, exploring her research into the role ofmicrobiological processes in wastewater treatment systems. We co-created music and musical games based upon her work, which we workshopped with the attendants at the Sage Gateshead.

LSO Soundhub Workshop

During my residency with LSO Soundhub, I was lucky enough to work with a great group of 14 musicians in a series of workshops at LSO St Lukes, London. The participants answered an open call that I put out, including amateurs, students and professionals.

Over 3 months, we explored ideas of game and instructional scores, developing ideas that fed towards my composition of new pieces at the end of the workshop series. This ranged from using tight, synchronised counting games as a point of departure for improvisation, graphical pattern notation and rule-based cueing strategies.

This led to the composition of 2 pieces – Fractured Moulds, Scattered Signals for 9 performers, and Metal Clay for percussion duo.

GCSE Music Composition Workshop, Bridge Academy, Hackney

Workshopping my Cogs methods with music students at Bridge Academy in Hackney, London introduced me to new ways of using my graphic scores. It was interesting to see how the GCSE students input sounds from their favourite music styles into these circular graphic scores, dislocating phrases, lyrics and beats from their original context by using the visual rhythm of the Cogs scores.

Definitely a fun experiment for me and I hope the students had fun too!

This workshop was supported by LSO Discovery.