Welcome to a landing page for our #LiquidWeber research presentation at the Desert Skies Symposium on Research in Music Learning and Teaching 2023.
This is a part of our ongoing #LiquidWeber Project.
Research Abstract:
Liquifying and Liberating the Practice(s) of Classical Music
Evan Tobias, Arizona State University
Alex Laing, Phoenix Symphony Orchestra
TRUVONNE, Artist, Producer, Independent Scholar
“It’s not about Weber, it’s about making Weber.” This answer to a question of whether it was appropriate to dedicate a significant amount of time and energy towards focusing on yet another dead White male composer was a clarifying moment as part of a larger conversation about what it meant to reframe the practice(s) of performance to be more liberatory and joyful, re-contextualize relationships between musicians and communities (and audiences), and to re-imagine how we might engage with classical music. While large ensembles sometimes address issues of equity by expanding the repertoire they perform, the process of how large ensembles engage with Classical music remains largely the same. What if the practice of Classical music were different, what if practicing classical music was more liberatory, more liquid?
We (a professional orchestral musician and music teacher educator) were interested in making the linear trajectory of practicing music for presentational performance to audiences (Turino, 2008), what Allsup (2016) describes as a closed form, more open, rhizomatic, and participatory (Jenkins,et al, 2009; Tobias, 2013). We were also interested in shifting the emphasis of practicing music from an almost sole focus on performance, to include an equally important process of ongoing learning. For instance, this shift in attention and mindset related to replacing the rumination and regret that might follow a mistake occurring during a performance with an opportunity to think “How fascinating. . .”
Throughout 2021-2022 we collaborated on imagining and embodying the making of the Weber Clarinet Concerto through a process and project we call #LiquidWeber. #LiquidWeber was born out of a professional musician seeking to reframe the experience of practice and to liberate classical music from the constraints of closed and inequitable systems of large ensemble performance. Building on concepts and metaphors such as streams, open kitchens, nose-to-tail eating, zero-waste, and composting we sought and designed experiences to make the most of the making of Weber by framing aspects of preparing the Weber Clarinet Concerto as opportunities for learning and participatory engagement, seeking to change how classical musicians engage with the public. We sought to reclaim what for others might be the waste or discarded aspects of making of classical music for a more (re)generative approach to support growth, learning, and community.
The first phase of #LiquidWeber occurred up until and shortly after the public performance of the Weber Clarinet Concerto with a professional Symphony Orchestra. The second phase of #LiquidWeber, which we address in this research, occurred several months after the official performance as we continued reflecting on the project and what we learned, considering the implications of the project for other professional musicians and for music education in varied contexts. This project “stream” explores how our experiences, reflections, and learning are also part of the making of the Weber Clarinet Concerto—its liquidity supporting our creation of a new open form (Allsup, 2016), in this case, bricolage or a remix of sorts as a way of making meaning of making the Weber Clarinet Concerto liquid. Through this process and ongoing dialogue and reflection, we consider the potential of making classical music liquid to reframe how people engage with classical music more broadly.
This study continues #LiquidWeber as streams of ongoing learning opportunities by exploring the following two research questions:
- What might we learn through “liquifying” and reframing the typical trajectory of practicing and performing classical music?
- What are the possibilities of arts-based research that further liquifies the making of the Weber clarinet concerto as a form of reflective-dialogue and music making to continue learning with and from the experience of liquifying classical music?
To answer these questions we combine design-based research (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012; DBR, 2003) and arts-based research (Bolden, 2017; Leavy, 2017) to mix reflection, analysis, music making, and learning through collaborative dialogue and a combination of live and produced music. Our approach involves a process of bricolage (Markham, 2020), sampling audio and video data from Phase 1 of the project (including but not limited to recorded conversation, text-based communication throughout the project, excerpts of recorded practice sessions) and juxtaposing these data with ongoing reflection and dialogue during Phase 2 of the project and then weaving these data with music based on recorded samples of the Weber Clarinet Concerto produced by a collaborating music artist/producer.
In re-contextualizing the making of the Weber Clarinet Concerto for a music education research conference we seek to further liquify the Concerto and expand the possibilities of learning with and from Classical music.
At Desert Skies we will present our design-based and arts-based research findings in the form of 1) bricolage including music (including the aforementioned samples of recorded data) for people to engage with and 2) dialogue with attendees and participants of our session.
