Voice, text and space (Portfolio) : participatory song-making and improvisation with vocal ensembles
- Submitting institution
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Queen's University of Belfast
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 135226310
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- Multi-component portfolio
- Open access status
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- Month
- -
- Year
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This output comprises a series of participative music activities including workshops and public performance events produced and facilitated between 2014-2020. These activities investigate participatory musical performance strategies including verbal notation, improvisation and musical games that aim to engage audience members in an exploration of their own vocality, found text, and the localities of their performance space.
The key activities included are ‘Literary Lunchtime’ (2014) and ‘Six-Part-Songs’ (2014) produced for Belfast City Choir; the workshops and performance ‘Tolka Chorus’ (2015); and HIVE Choir’s ‘Word on the Street’ (2019) and ‘Listen to My Ears’ (2020).
The project develops from contexts across improvised music, songwriting, sound art, performance art, socially-engaged practice, and site-specific practice. The techniques employed have been developed iteratively throughout workshops with vocalists and adapted for the specific participants and performance scenarios of each workshop or performance event.
A key influence on the musical strategies is the complementary approach to processes of critical listening and vocalisation within the work of Pauline Oliveros, incorporating sound poetry, echo and sonic imagination. In addition, this portfolio explores the individual participant’s interpretation of text-sources via melodic improvisation, inner speech, speech acts and conversation amongst participants. The composition of the verbal notation attempts to encourage intelligibility and individual performance choices, potentially decentralising authorship and giving participants choice over the inclusion, critique or censorship of particular texts.
This creative research is rooted in Belfast and Dublin, with lyrical material of Belfast City Choir and HIVE Choir navigating issues of post-conflict urban regeneration, and Tolka Chorus addressing social and environmental aspects of flooding.
The outcomes are the facilitated improvisation and composition processes carried out at workshops, the live public performance events, and the songbooks that are distributed to participants and audience members. Documentation of projects has also been shared in conference presentations in both academic and arts settings.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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