We are hosting this conference bringing together as many practitioners as possible from all
over the world who are artists, musicians, also active in a particular form of music
education.
It's called CMM, it's called Creative Music Making, it's called Collaborative Creative
Practice.
Let's not lose any time on finding a definition for it.
The most important message is what these artists have to bring, teaching music by making music.
I think that's one of the most essential elements in this practice.
And the people that will present here, they facilitate this process in very different
ways.
Just like drums on, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
So if I say turandot, you say ice.
For test.
For lefty.
Yes.
Can you elaborate a little bit more?
I don't know what it says, that's my answer.
We are looking for the quality of communication.
I never had lyrics which meant this much.
It's like creating your own identity through making music with each other.
This practice is about engaged music making, it's about creating a new aesthetic where
the individual has as much of a role as the collective or the group.
Connect with each other, discover, explore, experiment, make something together that's
greater than any one of those people could make on their own.
The kind of educational and the artistic and the kind of social and political all being
equally as strong and important even though the vehicle is through making new work together.
So the kind of bigger ideas behind it but the kind of stuff that we're doing is music
and it's sound.
The sort of main thing that I think I was sort of presenting here was drum works which
is quite big percussion projects based in East London, we've got about 400 kids in
six schools every week.
So Future Band is a project we created about eight years ago and it's a performing, composing
ensemble for young people from across London.
I'm a play artist in Vienna as a camera orchestra, I'm a music teacher, I work in the music
department at the University of Music and I'm a producer in Vienna.
I am a drummer, an educator, composer and producer.
I am currently living in Netherlands where I am on the faculty for the NIP, New Audiences
and Innovative Practice European Masters programme.
When you open your eyes I'd like you to stand in front of each other and look into each
other's eyes.
What did that represent, what did it make you feel?
In addition to teaching at the Sibelius Academy I also give my own workshops and I'm interested
in working more with groups and teaching rhythmics, creativity, communication and world music
and I want to bring those things both to the professionals and to the music teachers that
are already in the field and give them some new tools and inspiration.
So I work with under four year olds and I use elements of creative music making, letting
them explore instruments freely, letting this young age group already experience how it
is to be silent, listen to music and then react to it by making music again.
As a project manager in Tivoli-Veregenburg I try to facilitate workshop leaders so it's
a classroom of 40-50 kids that go in and try to compose a new piece and on the other end
of the spectrum I work as a workshop leader for musicians without borders.
In Palestine, Northern Ireland, Tanzania, around the world.
I have many projects with people with dementia.
I'm running a project to fund a music school in Guatemala for children.
I work in Mexico as a guest teacher in the university and I have been trying to find
new ways of teaching early music and engage people in another kind of performance that
is more linked to the society.
I'm a harp player so I was playing harp in this house band and we were just asked to
give music a feedback on each presentation.
So it was really something new to me just to transform a speech or words or way of talking
or content of the speech into music, it's just part of our work to be open to any kind
of situation.
To react, yes.
It was a creative process symposium so we had to be creative as much as possible.
The presentation was mainly about the individuals explaining about practice, about concrete projects
but we took a step farther in that.
We spoke about life, about philosophy, which really went into the essence of this practice.
I think one of the unique things that this age group gets is that they are actually challenged
already at this young age in a very musical way.
I don't use many props except for musical instruments so actually I think I'm training
their ear and I'm opening their ear.
We try as much as is possible for the project to not be run on this really top down way.
The direction of the project, the music we play, the way we play it, is arrived at organically
by everyone being on a sort of level pegging in terms of making decisions.
In our own very, very small, very personal but also political way addresses how people
have conversations together and learn to listen better and learn to share their thoughts.
They have some shared experiences of life and things that they like and don't like and
they bring that to that space so continuing to be a composer at that moment is about finding
what those things are and they are often very ethereal and trying to pull them together
to make something that has meaning for everyone.
You go to musical resources and musical materials of composition, arranging, what do we need
for those, we need melody, we need rhythm, we need harmony, we need texture.
So we find creative ways to be able to explore those raw materials that relates to who the
people are, where they come from and why we're doing it.
What kind of qualities do you need to engage in this kind of shared leadership?
I try to be as flexible as possible as a workshop leader in Palestine to bring out
my musicianship and my flexibility in order to engage people that are not engaging naturally
because of all kinds of problems they have.
And also a certain confidence that whatever issues or confrontations or conflict, which
is not necessarily a negative word at all for me, whatever conflict happens you can
find a way to keep people with you, keep the hands tied to a certain respect whilst you're
actually going along this journey together, that push through is also what makes the work
so special.
When I saw the project of Music at Dementia, I remembered that contact with my grandmother.
When we lost that communication, our family started to fade away.
Empathy was one of the most important aptitudes of my grandmother and it has started to impregnate
every single aspect of the practice of making music.
If I look at where I live in the world, these are the problems that I see.
What can I do about that as an artist?
You know, the core driver is very important for the work, a lot of the work that's been
discussed here to look at that why, why is it important that this stuff happens and everyone
will have their own view of that.
So it's about group development within the classroom, artistic development within the
classroom.
In the Musicians Without Borders circumstances, it's about community building between maybe
two parts of a community that have been divided by conflict.
The goals are totally different.
The thing that is similar is that creativity and music builds bridges between people,
between the stage and an audience, and between Tilly-Veinberg and the city, which then goes
on to develop itself as a whole.
So that's the result that we aim for.
And that was never enough for me to just play a new concert.
Actually, it was already during the study, we had a studio with friends, we had a
chamber orchestra and always tried to reach new audience layers in the kitchen, in the
WG, sat together and thought of ideas and just tried them out.
And I found that to be so enriching.
At the time, the theme of music production was not at all, so we really pioneered that
it always gained a greater meaning for me.
These kind of creative working methods are an essential part of GLOMAS because the students
come from all over the world and in the heart of the GLOMAS education, there's this transcultural
collaboration and creating things with people from really various backgrounds where it becomes
valuable to learn to listen and to learn to work together and contact and communicate
with different kinds of people.
I had contact with this old woman that was a nurse in the hospital where we were working.
She was working there already for quite a few years and then she got dementia and by
the time that we made our project, she had already been there as a patient.
After being a nurse there, we didn't get to her until the sixth session.
In that moment, all the tension that she had that was manifested in eye movements or in
leg movements transformed and she began to cry.
By the joy of having been able to communicate through music.
That was a very important moment for all of us, but especially for me because I understood
the power of music.
When it comes to music education, the power is still in those organizations.
You can't do this also just alone, therefore you have to be very strategic.
There are people out there trying to make things happen who are on your way.
I just think you have to spend a hell of a lot of time doing it.
Idealism within a classroom, big lump, is not going to get you anywhere.
There will be challenges.
There are challenges, there's always funding challenges, so we kind of find a way to keep
hold of what's really important to us and be really flexible.
I think both of those things are important and I think they're both possible.
Being in our country, in the south of Europe, is a change that hasn't arrived yet because
it doesn't have the status or the value that has in another country, in the north or center
of Europe.
And the proof of that is that if you have a look at the conservatories in here in the
whole Netherlands, they are full of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek students.
So we really need to bring all this practice into our countries and show people what really
music can do to them.
And at any point in time, there are other challenges because ultimately, I think, it's always the
decisive thing to stay on, no matter if there are obstacles or if you're burning for this
work and for what it can affect.
And then there are obstacles, no matter.
It's a traditional way of thinking, but now I think it's opening up and more and more
people are getting interested and finding out that you can really work in an academic
level, for example, and work with your body and work with all your senses.
I recently met a student who was 15 years old when he was first doing this project.
I met him again a couple of months ago when he was 20.
It changed his life.
It changed his perception of music, his perception of classical music as well, his perception
of his own creativity.
I think diversity and inclusivity are really at the heart of the project.
There's an access agreement, which is about the thread from your first point of contact
through a project like ours and straight into maybe one day coming to a place like the Guildhall.
Really we are really rich and proud of having this and lucky to have these periods to really
go farther.
There's something that we have to fight for at one point and so, yeah, revolution.
I think one of the beautiful things in meeting all these people and hearing presentations
and having conversations has been the very genuine way of sharing things, sharing also
the problems that you face during this work and your vulnerability and your strengths
as well.
It was an inspiring experience.
In these days I could think about what I want to keep for my future and my own experience
and what not to take.
The thing that I like the most is all the reflection and all the thinking we have done together
because I see this practice as a really necessary evolution of the music making.
I think our generation will be the first who actually can realise which are the real problems
and try to fix them.
We are now trying to keep a pause with this programme.
The level of humanity in music, totally battles this amazing.
To see everybody as friends, to see everybody as one people.
For me, really now, what the main purpose is is to try and create a new aesthetic and
a new music and a new sound and of course there are no terms that have existed for
this new style so there isn't a genre that exists unless it's difficult to maybe explain
but it's tangible and that for me I think is more of the raison d'etre than the moral
compass.
That's just a beautiful side effect.
It really makes you a better person.
It really makes you more aware of the people you have around you and appreciate art in
a different way and really being aware of the impact that a specific piece of art never
minds music or is painting or sculpture or is a film can have to you, can do to you.
We need that for a better life I think.
