Join us for this special, virtual collaboration between new and returning music performers and music creators at Royal Holloway, as we kickstart the academic year with our digital world premiere on a theme of Beethoven's Piano Concertos.
On December 16, 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven popped into the world, no doubt humming the first few bars of his 9 Variations on a March. This makes 2020 the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, and for the first time, the Department of Music is launching a special opportunity for new and returning students to collaborate on a unique project to commemorate this milestone and the new academic year: to record and respond to Beethoven's pioneering Piano Concertos with brand-new work.
Hailed as the cornerstone of the piano concerto, Ludwig van Beethoven's five piano concertos are heralded as the first steps from the old and into the new, from stately classicism to the impassioned revolutionary he is pictured as being, and opening a new dawn of musical dialogue with the world around him. What better music to bring our new and returning students together and create something new?
Throughout the summer of 2020, we are encouraging all students, new and current, to join us and record pre-selected excerpts from Beethoven's five piano concertos. These recorded excerpts will be taken by a team of selected music creators (composers and sound artists) to create a series of Beethoven Snapshots, for a world premiere on 26 September 2020, as part of Welcome Week 2020 at Royal Holloway University of London.
During COVID-19
In response to the current global situation, this project will take place online: Project curators, Rebecca Miller and Dr Tom Parkinson will lead the project by video conferencing, and recordings, sketches and sound ideas will be shared digitally.
Owing to the uncertainty brought by COVID-19, we and the participating performers and music creators will be required to take a flexible, innovative approach to process and delivery. The full schedule and deadline overview will be shared with participants as soon as our call for participants closes.
How do I get involved?
As a performer?
Are you a violinist who loves a melody? Are you a pianist who wants to take centre-stage?
We are looking for new and returning students, undergraduate to postgraduate research, at the Department of Music to join us in recording a catalogue of excerpts from Beethoven's five piano concertos.
So whether you play the violin or bassoon, piccolo or double bass, piano or triangle, guitar or saxophone, and everything in between, we would like to hear from you.
We are pleased to have our 2019-2020 Orchestral Scholars on-board to help us with this project, so all performers will be assigned with one of the following Project Leads: Dan Gurner, Rachel Pankhurst, Renee Lewis (violin), Nimat Awoyemi (viola), Ciaran Trevena (cello), Abigail Caveney (woodwind), Peter Le Tissier (brass) and Becca Stell (percussion/piano).
Sign-up has now closed, but you can still take part in lots of Welcome Week activities by checking out our schedule.
As a music creator?
Want to respond to the music of Beethoven? Want to explore the relationship between the music of the past and the present?
As part of this unique project, we are also looking for a team of music creators to create 2-3 minute musical 'snapshots' using the pre-recorded material from Beethoven's pianos concertos.
These snapshots will be curated into a thread of works that will be given a world premiere as part of Welcome Week 2020.
Sign-up has now closed, but you can still take part in lots of Welcome Week activities by checking out our schedule.
