WALKING OPERA
THE FRAMEWORK
Walking Opera is a site specific work with strong engagement with local communities. The main and core element of this work is thorough participation of the audience in the whole creative process of the work. It has two active stages:
1 – Musical meetings: These are a series of voice exploration workshops with local community members from the area the opera is to be presented in. We come to the locations where different groups of communities gather (be it international student meeting, new political party meeting, or senior afternoon tea gathering, or children's music lessons in school). During those meetings, led by me and a professional singer, participants learn to understand and explore their voices, share stories of their local areas with us, and together create some vocal compositions to be used later in the Sound-walk. We, from our side, get our audience to experience a new opera 'from within' – starting with new opera vocal techniques, and finishing with the creation of a contemporary opera scene together.
2 – Sound-walk: This is a new opera in the form of a sound-walk. All the audio material from the Musical Meetings is worked into the soundtrack for the Sound-walk. Rather than sitting in the comfortable opera house chairs, the audience are given headphones (I use portable silent disco equipment which allows me to manipulate soundtracks live on my tablet) and invited for a walk around their local area, to see and hear the familiar streets, landscapes and buildings in a new way. The story of the opera unfolds as the statues, plants and objects of the area come to life through arias and recitatives, and vocal choirs created by the communities during the Musical Meetings. As a surprise, live characters appear involving the audience into their swirl of dance, or handing a brush to paint, or asking the audience to contribute their very own voice for the final scene of the opera. This interactive sound-walk is open to listeners of any age and is very much family friendly.
WALKING OPERA IN AARHUS
First edition of the Walking Opera emerged as part of Operatic Mass Actions project as part of Aarhus - Capital of Culture 2017. It was supported by CoOperations and AUT, and Nordic Culture Point, and was created by me in collaboration with soprano singer Elisenda Pujals, soprano singer Åsa Nordgren, and sound artist Michael Idehall, together with local communities - University of Aarhus International Student Community, political party Alternativet, and Performing Arts Platform Morgenbriefing members.
Have a look at the full description of Walking Opera in Aarhus; the video trailer and full video of the sound-walk.
WALKING OPERA IN NOTTING HILL
The second edition of the Walking opera is held in Notting Hill in Summer/Autumn 2018, as part of Baltic Art Form festival, supported by PRS Foundation, and Lithuanian Arts Council. The story of the opera encompasses multicultural London's background and has a link to a Baltic dimension through singing archaic Lithuanian songs sutartines. The crew for the opera besides me, are opera singers Elisedna Pujals, Åsa Nordgren, Janet Oates, and sound artist Michael Idehall, also joined by sutartines singers Beatrice Bukantyte and Vejuna Zalatyte, and Latvian Choir.
THE REASON
Active participation in the creation of music has been a way of experiencing music from long before the classical music tradition was born. Music in a ritual, where the whole community is actively participating and contributing to it, is way of connecting, celebrating and healing. In classical music, however, a gradual division of roles – composer, performer, listener – has now reached a peak, where these roles define precise levels of participation in the musical event. Here, the composer presents their idea in the form of a piece. The piece is disintegrated and reintegrated in the rehearsal, and the product of the work is demonstrated to the listener, hopefully practising active listening on hearing the piece. The three – composer, performer and listener – are participating in the same musical event, but through different modes of engagement, at different times, and resulting in a different experience of it.
Such refined division of roles in contemporary classical music also requires very specific experience and preparation – not only of the composer and performer, but also of the listener.
However, being musical, and therefore being able to actively participate in musical events, is something that we, so it seems, inherit with our genes. Stefan Koelsch and Walter Siebel in their book Towards a Neural Basis of Music Perception state that: “One of the most intriguing findings in music psychology research is that even individuals without formal musical training show sophisticated abilities to acquire knowledge about musical syntax, and to understand (and enjoy) music. This finding strongly supports the notion that musicality is a natural ability of the human brain.”1
By blurring the roles of composer, performer and listener, and by engaging my audience into active participation, I aim to allow everyone without that specific education to be a part of the piece, for a more authentic, more involving and therefore more rewarding musical experience. The musical experience may become an environment for self-discovery and self-expression.
However, here I come to a question many professional composers and musicians (and listeners) come across – doesn't making music available for wider audiences (not educated in this very specific field) require presentation of some simplified version of it?
I try to answer 'No', and prove it through the experimental research.
As a composer, I see my compositional process as a path: the starting point is a condition ('I want to write a piece') and the finishing point is showing a summary of my decisions (performing the piece for the audience, or presenting the finished score to the performers). This path is a venture into undiscovered subconscious territories, coordinated by a semi-conscious sequence of decision-making.
In preparing for Walking Opera, once I have walked this path and arrived at a conclusion (finished composition), I make a note of the most important turning points. The Walking Opera starts as I take my 'audience
' to walk that path with me again. Participation is a central part of the actual musical event, and the group dynamic is the guide, while my (professional) experience of composing this piece beforehand is a map.
This journey is the core of the Musical Meetings. The participant IS both a composer and performer, moreover, the participant is a part of a collective. Each individual contributing to the group flow is also shaping the artistic outcome, as well as individual and group experience. By experiencing the opera from within, a stronger bond occurs between the community members.
Audio recordings from these Meetings are later being worked into the sound-tracks to accompany the Sound-walk (the second stage of Walking Opera). The scenery of the opera is the unaltered reality we see, but a new interpretation of the scenery is expressed through the aural world accompanying us while we walk and look around. The audio the messenger of our ideas: 'when we imagined our walk around here, this is what we saw, this is how we felt'.
1
‘Meaning in music, moreover, is not necessarily restricted to its emotive properties. <...> (M)usical information can prime representations of meaningful concepts, and that music can have a systematic influence on the semantic processing of words. This indicates that music is capable of conveying meaning information, and that the priming effects on the semantic processing of words can be identical for music and language.’ S. Koelsch and W. A. Siebel, ‘Towards a Neural Basis of Music Perception’ (Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.9, No.12, (December 2005), 581.
Walking Opera is a site specific work with strong engagement with local communities. The main and core element of this work is thorough participation of the audience in the whole creative process of the work. It has two active stages:
1 – Musical meetings: These are a series of voice exploration workshops with local community members from the area the opera is to be presented in. We come to the locations where different groups of communities gather (be it international student meeting, new political party meeting, or senior afternoon tea gathering, or children's music lessons in school). During those meetings, led by me and a professional singer, participants learn to understand and explore their voices, share stories of their local areas with us, and together create some vocal compositions to be used later in the Sound-walk. We, from our side, get our audience to experience a new opera 'from within' – starting with new opera vocal techniques, and finishing with the creation of a contemporary opera scene together.
2 – Sound-walk: This is a new opera in the form of a sound-walk. All the audio material from the Musical Meetings is worked into the soundtrack for the Sound-walk. Rather than sitting in the comfortable opera house chairs, the audience are given headphones (I use portable silent disco equipment which allows me to manipulate soundtracks live on my tablet) and invited for a walk around their local area, to see and hear the familiar streets, landscapes and buildings in a new way. The story of the opera unfolds as the statues, plants and objects of the area come to life through arias and recitatives, and vocal choirs created by the communities during the Musical Meetings. As a surprise, live characters appear involving the audience into their swirl of dance, or handing a brush to paint, or asking the audience to contribute their very own voice for the final scene of the opera. This interactive sound-walk is open to listeners of any age and is very much family friendly.
WALKING OPERA IN AARHUS
First edition of the Walking Opera emerged as part of Operatic Mass Actions project as part of Aarhus - Capital of Culture 2017. It was supported by CoOperations and AUT, and Nordic Culture Point, and was created by me in collaboration with soprano singer Elisenda Pujals, soprano singer Åsa Nordgren, and sound artist Michael Idehall, together with local communities - University of Aarhus International Student Community, political party Alternativet, and Performing Arts Platform Morgenbriefing members.
Have a look at the full description of Walking Opera in Aarhus; the video trailer and full video of the sound-walk.
WALKING OPERA IN NOTTING HILL
The second edition of the Walking opera is held in Notting Hill in Summer/Autumn 2018, as part of Baltic Art Form festival, supported by PRS Foundation, and Lithuanian Arts Council. The story of the opera encompasses multicultural London's background and has a link to a Baltic dimension through singing archaic Lithuanian songs sutartines. The crew for the opera besides me, are opera singers Elisedna Pujals, Åsa Nordgren, Janet Oates, and sound artist Michael Idehall, also joined by sutartines singers Beatrice Bukantyte and Vejuna Zalatyte, and Latvian Choir.
THE REASON
Active participation in the creation of music has been a way of experiencing music from long before the classical music tradition was born. Music in a ritual, where the whole community is actively participating and contributing to it, is way of connecting, celebrating and healing. In classical music, however, a gradual division of roles – composer, performer, listener – has now reached a peak, where these roles define precise levels of participation in the musical event. Here, the composer presents their idea in the form of a piece. The piece is disintegrated and reintegrated in the rehearsal, and the product of the work is demonstrated to the listener, hopefully practising active listening on hearing the piece. The three – composer, performer and listener – are participating in the same musical event, but through different modes of engagement, at different times, and resulting in a different experience of it.
Such refined division of roles in contemporary classical music also requires very specific experience and preparation – not only of the composer and performer, but also of the listener.
However, being musical, and therefore being able to actively participate in musical events, is something that we, so it seems, inherit with our genes. Stefan Koelsch and Walter Siebel in their book Towards a Neural Basis of Music Perception state that: “One of the most intriguing findings in music psychology research is that even individuals without formal musical training show sophisticated abilities to acquire knowledge about musical syntax, and to understand (and enjoy) music. This finding strongly supports the notion that musicality is a natural ability of the human brain.”1
By blurring the roles of composer, performer and listener, and by engaging my audience into active participation, I aim to allow everyone without that specific education to be a part of the piece, for a more authentic, more involving and therefore more rewarding musical experience. The musical experience may become an environment for self-discovery and self-expression.
However, here I come to a question many professional composers and musicians (and listeners) come across – doesn't making music available for wider audiences (not educated in this very specific field) require presentation of some simplified version of it?
I try to answer 'No', and prove it through the experimental research.
As a composer, I see my compositional process as a path: the starting point is a condition ('I want to write a piece') and the finishing point is showing a summary of my decisions (performing the piece for the audience, or presenting the finished score to the performers). This path is a venture into undiscovered subconscious territories, coordinated by a semi-conscious sequence of decision-making.
In preparing for Walking Opera, once I have walked this path and arrived at a conclusion (finished composition), I make a note of the most important turning points. The Walking Opera starts as I take my 'audience
' to walk that path with me again. Participation is a central part of the actual musical event, and the group dynamic is the guide, while my (professional) experience of composing this piece beforehand is a map.
This journey is the core of the Musical Meetings. The participant IS both a composer and performer, moreover, the participant is a part of a collective. Each individual contributing to the group flow is also shaping the artistic outcome, as well as individual and group experience. By experiencing the opera from within, a stronger bond occurs between the community members.
Audio recordings from these Meetings are later being worked into the sound-tracks to accompany the Sound-walk (the second stage of Walking Opera). The scenery of the opera is the unaltered reality we see, but a new interpretation of the scenery is expressed through the aural world accompanying us while we walk and look around. The audio the messenger of our ideas: 'when we imagined our walk around here, this is what we saw, this is how we felt'.
1
‘Meaning in music, moreover, is not necessarily restricted to its emotive properties. <...> (M)usical information can prime representations of meaningful concepts, and that music can have a systematic influence on the semantic processing of words. This indicates that music is capable of conveying meaning information, and that the priming effects on the semantic processing of words can be identical for music and language.’ S. Koelsch and W. A. Siebel, ‘Towards a Neural Basis of Music Perception’ (Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.9, No.12, (December 2005), 581.