Joint Research Project between Newcastle University and the Royal Northern College of Music
Perhaps the most significant result of the CETL Collective Performance project for ICMuS overall is the enormous increase in ensemble performance activities across a whole gamut of different genres. Many new ensembles have been formed and others enhanced, so that virtually all our students are now participating regularly in ensembles including rock and jazz groups, a salsa band, viol consorts, free improvisers, and a klezmer group, through to blockbuster projects such as a performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in The Sage Gateshead Hall 1 in April 2008.
The more ‘formal’ side of this development has been the modification of several existing undergraduate performance studies modules to incorporate taught collective performance skills, which are so important and relevant for practising musicians, no matter what form their future careers will take.
For example, Stage 1 students now spend the first eleven weeks of their first year working in small groups made up of about a dozen musicians from a real mix of backgrounds – classical orchestral players, singers from pop and classical music, rock and jazz musicians – where they learn a variety of generic ensemble skills, including listening, improvising, arranging, negotiating and planning. Stage 2, 3 and 4 rock and jazz musicians are now taught not only in individual lessons, but also as members of bands, and it is in this latter form that they are assessed.
In addition, we have introduced a brand new module in Collective Performance, available to all honours students, irrespective of their music specialism, in which they get the chance to work in intensive, near-professional conditions with top-level musicians over a short period and to produce together a public performance of their own devising.
So far, there have been exciting cross-genre ‘collectives’ in such areas as medieval song, singer-songwriting, vocal music theatre and contemporary folk music, with other projects in the pipeline. Students not only make music together, they also reflect on their experiences and analyse the processes, giving them invaluable insights into musical practice ‘out there in the real world’.
All this is very exciting, but it also raises many fundamental pedagogical questions, including the problem of assessing the contributions of individuals to collective activities. In September 2006, we organised a one-day symposium for our instrumental and vocal tutors and academic staff, to consider the whole topic of ‘Assessing Students Performing in Groups’, and invited as our guest speaker, Dr Jane Ginsborg, Research Fellow at the Research Centre for the Vocational Training of Musicians at our ‘sister’ CETL in Music, the Royal Northern College of Music. The symposium was very stimulating – especially as the delegates were invited to ‘assess’ three different student ensembles, a rock group, a folk ensemble and a classical piano trio – and naturally it raised more questions than it answered.
To cut a longish story short, Jane Ginsborg and Richard Wistreich, Head of Performance at Newcastle, found that not only did they both need to conduct further research into the whole subject before they could produce assessment objectives and criteria for collective performance, but that there could be enormous potential in comparing practice at two institutions as different as ours. The result was the design of a two-year project, to track the progress of a variety of different student ensembles in different genres (folk ensembles, pop bands, string and wind quartets and quintets) and at different stages of their degree programmes. A successful application for research funding (approximately £10,000) was made to Palatine (the Higher Education Academy for Subject Centre for Dance, Drama and Music) in July 2007, and research is now underway.Tutors and students from each institution will meet and share experiences, as well as taking part in joint assessment exercises.
By the end of the project, we aim to be able evaluate such things as how student ensembles are best formed (student self-selection? at random? by audition?), the ways in which we tutor and support student ensembles as they develop and also, how we assess them. We are very hopeful that the results of our study will be of interest and use to all kinds of higher education institutions where music performance is taught, whether universities, colleges or conservatories, and we plan to disseminate our results as widely as possible.
