T HE
CU R AT I N GCOM P OS E R
A MINI PUBLICATION BY STUDIO WILL DUT TA
SWD004 © STUDIO WILL DUT TA , 2021

S T U D I O W I L L D U T TA
studiowilldutta.art

T HE
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TABLE OF CONTENTSI.

ABSTRACT

01

II.

INTRODUCTION

03

III.

BECOMING CURATOR:CONFRONTING THE INSTITUTION

7

IV.

DIY

11

V.

CASE STUDY:

15

VI.

CONCLUSION

25GLOSSARY

28

REFERENCE LIST30

S T U D I O W I L L D U T TA
studiowilldutta.art
In association with

The Curating Composer is written by Will Dutta
Art Direction by Russell Warren-Fisher
Published by Studio Will Dutta on 1 July 2021
All contents of this paper; text, images and illustrations - the design, layout and feel ofthe publication are protected by copyright, design right and intellectual property rights
which are owned by Studio Will Dutta © Studio Will Dutta 2021. Nothing contained in thispaper may be reproduced without written permission.

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ABSTRACTThis paper presents the curating composer as a new role in 21st
century music making with a distinct set of practices. Bytransferring and constructively applying curatorial language,
methods and strategies from the discipline of visual arts into themusical domain, I arrive at two general principles that mark out
the curating composer’s workflow: (1) the reciprocal relationshipbetween creative and distributive processes (mutual exchange);(2) free movement between creative acts and the curatorialsituation (mobility).
This role speaks to practitioners and educators alike for thecontemporary contexts of the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives
Matter protests necessitate a radical reappraisal of who gets tomake culture and mediate cultural production. Furthermore, injust 20 years rapid technological change has shattered professional
infrastructure and at the same time we are now facing up to theastonishing scale of digital culture.

The Little Prince, Studio Will Dutta, 2016 © Studio Will Dutta

The methodology is a written commentary and my own
practice-led research. In the commentary I look at the culturalcontext of the indie-classical scene, and I present the firststylistic account of non-classical music that developed within
this DIY subculture in London in 2003. My case study is bloom:
a studio album project that is many-shaped (recording,
performance, interactive site, newsletter, film, workshop) andopen-ended. Through aesthetic and entrepreneurial leadership, I
show the potential significance of the curating composer inwhat has become a bewilderingly fragmented landscape.

Keywords: curator, composer, non-classical, indie-classical,
entrepreneurship
Ref: Dutta, W., 2021. The Curating Composer. [PDF] Available
at: <http://studiowilldutta.art>

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INTRODUCTION
In this exploratory paper, I will introduce the ‘curating composer’
as a new role in the field of music. I have structured the paper
to address the following questions:
1. What are some of the curatorial strategies and processes incontemporary visual culture that might help develop the curating
composer’s role?

MUTUAL EXCHANGE: the reciprocal relationshipbetween creative and distributive processes

2. How have composers applied curatorial strategies in new andexperimental music practices?
3. What might a construction of this original role look like?

MOBILITY: the free movement between creative acts
and the curatorial situation

I begin this study by setting out some of the iconoclastic
developments in 20th century art production that (in)directly led
to the institutional curator’s profile modulating to independent
exhibition maker. I then deal with more recent technologicaldevelopments that have enabled contemporary visual artists toregain control over how their work is displayed and mediated.
In the second section, I reflect on experimental music practices
in the late middle part of the 20th century where composers
used new apparatus and ways of working to restore editorial
control in the presentation of their sound and music. I go on to
speak about the current tension between individual andinstitution using the example of the indie-classical scene because
it is here that we see composers at a grassroots level developing
platforms to engage hyper-local communities with their work.
Furthermore, I present an overview of non-classical music thatfirst developed within this subculture in London in 2003 because
it is possible to identify the convergence of a particular set of
creative and curatorial processes.

Time Stands Still 16mm still, Pedro Maia, 2020 © Pedro Maia

In the final section, I present my studio album project, bloom, asa case study for how we might construct the role of the curating
composer. My way of making sees idiomatic artistic creation andcuratorial processes converge in a body of work I composed (orinitiated) with electronic music duo Plaid (Ed Handley and Andy
Turner), computer-music designer Manuel Poletti and composer
Max de Wardener.

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I want to show in this paper how a curating composer can make anddistribute new artistic work using a mobile and networked creative andcuratorial process. Let me unpack that statement by setting out some
general principles.
The role is marked out by two general principles that dovetail across thecurating composer’s workflow:• Mutual exchange: the reciprocal relationship between creativeand distributive processes• Mobility: the free movement between creative acts and thecuratorial situation
The curating composer might also choose to take the following position:
1. I take the view, which is
given substance in the casestudy in Section V, that the
curatorial function in thisinstance is active in bringing
about a unique andtemporary situation forothers to respond to.
However, this might notalways be the case and istherefore not a principle.

• Networked: distributed structures where creative responsibility isshared between collaborators 1
It is my contention that music creators (and recreators) should be equippedwith curatorial skills if they are to successfully generate paid opportunities
for themselves, sustain careers and enable the artistic ecology that goeswith it to thrive. It is also clear that this playbook should be available (andembedded in education pathways) to a new generation of cultural producers
to provide aesthetic, mediation and entrepreneurial direction. In my opinion,
over time the outcome of this would help make the institution far more
representative. What follows is my attempt to set out and substantiate
curatorial principles for those working in music.
A note on language: A simple definition of curating is the selection andcompilation of objects in relation to a given context (Hü ttner, 2003, no page
number]. For the successful exhibition of their work, and/or that of anumber of artists, we should look to the artist-run models that employ
innovative curatorial design and exhibition strategies to reach and engage
their audience. This is due, in part but not exclusively, to the widely
acknowledged decline in audience attendance at concert halls for art music
and by association new music performances (Benjamin, 2009, p.7). Moreover,the practitioner, aided by social media and artist-first platforms such as
Bandcamp, can create, promote and disseminate their work without third
parties. The curator-as-mediator or ‘middleman’ (O’Neill, 2007, pp.20-30) is
particularly pertinent given the abundance of creative content jostling forour attention today.
We should also consider the tension between the roles of curator andprogrammer. Performance artist Paul Couillard (2009, p.85) describes it asa crude but useful binary ‘to recognise that they are distinct methodologies
that will affect not only what performance art gets shown, but also howthat work is understood’. He offers a curated programme to be ‘an authored
selection guided by goals of analytic inquiry… to privilege notions ofcoherence and interrelationship’ (Ibid., p.84), whilst programming prioritises
entertainment over theoretical framework; events engage audiences witha set of experiences.

The 20/19 Project Lemonade Pictures, 2019 © Lemonade Pictures

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BECOMING CURATOR:CONFRONTING THE
INSTITUTION
The independent curator currently occupies a highly visible
position in the discipline of visual arts. In the last decade alone
there has been a regular flow of critical literature reexamining
their shifting role (Obrist, 2008; Wade, 2009; O’Neill, 2012;
Balzer, 2014). The influential artist, curator and writer PaulO’Neill (2012, p.32) neatly categorises this into three distinct
periods: ‘from demystification in the 1960s to visibility in the
1980s to supervisibility of the curator in the 1990s’. Scores ofjournals and symposia plus the legions of graduating students
well versed in the curatorial turn help to maintain this now highly
professional career path.
Our contemporary understanding of the role has its foundationsin the early 20th century. In his history of the art exhibition,
curator Hans Ulrich Obrist (2014, pp.26-29) identifies theinnovation of the gallery as framing device as pivotal to thedevelopment of the modern curator. This process started whenartists such as Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters and Piet
Mondrian ‘began to innovate and invent display features within
this expanded format’ (Ibid., p.29). They took it upon themselvesto challenge what they saw as the rigid institutional framework
within which works of art were formerly displayed and critiqued.

Late at Tate PRS Foundation, 2015 © PRS Foundation

Duchamp questioned the very nature of what constitutes a workof art in his readymades, Bottle Rack (1914) and Fountain (1917).
His event-based installation Mile of String (1942) went further
still: ‘[it] treated the exhibition itself as the relevant carrier of
meaning’ (Ibid.). Kurt Schwitters’ invention of ‘Merz’ to describe
his collage and assemblage works blurred the boundary for the
first time between fine art and popular culture; and both
Schwitters and Piet Mondrian rejected completely the idea ofexhibiting pictures in traditional gallery spaces. Schwitters’
Merzbau is an example of a total environment. These artists
foreshadowed the contemporary understanding of context as an
idea ‘to serve as the artwork by itself’ (MoMA, 2014). The
potentiality of this idea has since become one of the curator’s
most important devices in their armoury of storytelling, meaning
making and analytic inquiry. In this light, they set the stage for a
modulation from the autonomous curator-as-carer within theinstitution (Lichty, 2008, p.164) to an independent exhibition
maker working off-site. Artists Amelie Nordenfelt and Per
Hü ttner (2003, no page number) argue this was one of theimportant changes for contemporary art, ‘to step out of thewhite cube to search for new challenges, to claim more space,
new contexts and to rework ideas’.
The arrival of the first curatorial study programmes in the late
1990s reinforced the distinction between the discursive and thepractical within the art institution by positioning the curator in
the school of humanities and practitioner fine arts. This forking
also reveals the unevenness of the two roles; the curator seems
to dominate contemporary culture over and above the artist(Borelli, 2013). This has led the writer David Balzer (2014, p.26)
to question whether the presence of the curator disempowers
and even negates the artist. A reaction and counteraction to thisis the phenomenon of the artist-curator or curartist, whose
impact first gathered momentum in the 1980s (O’Neill, 2007,p.16). While still seen as a subdominant form of exhibition
maker (Birchall and Mabaso, 2013, p.64), artists, curators, artistcurators or curartists and curatorial collectives are all now
stakeholders in bringing about institutional reinvention. Indeed,
the author Winfried Stü rzl (2013, p.6) says the foundation of alarge number of project spaces or off-spaces is a clear sign ofintent by this now omnipresent phenomenon.
I will now mention three examples of artists innovating art
production with varying applications of curatorial decisionmaking. The first is Eastside Projects in Birmingham (UK), cofounded in 2008 by artists Gavin Wade, Ruth Claxton, Simonand Tom Bloor, designer James Langdon and architect Celine
Condorelli. They describe Eastside Projects (n.d) as ‘an artist-run
multiverse, commissioning, producing and presenting
experimental art practices and demonstrating ways in which art
may be useful as part of society’. They provide material
infrastructure for local, national and international artists andpresent a national public art programme. Their work is politicallyand socially engaged and rooted in their local place in the West
Midlands. In describing the evolving model of Eastside Projects,
Gavin Wade says, ‘we don’t call ourselves a “collaborative
curatorial platform” but it may apply’ (Birchall and Mabaso,
2013, p.65).
The next curatorial project is ‘Remote’ by Vince Dziekan (2007)
in which the artist expands the exhibition format into the virtual.
He calls this process ‘dimensioning’ where the contemporary
exhibition is now ‘a dynamic, interconnected system of forms,
spaces and relationships’ (Dziekan, 2007, no page number). His
primary output, an interactive PDF, establishes an essential
relationship between the publication format (its distribution) andthe content of his argument (production). He wants to show the
impact on how communication and meaning are culturally
negotiated, and how viewer participation is socially organised

and experienced through the medium of the exhibition. It is
important to note this project and Dziekan’s theorising around it
predates the widespread adoption of social media.

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It is perhaps unsurprising then that we can see dimensioning
accelerating with the ubiquity of social media platforms.
Excellences and Perfections is a performance work by artist
Amalia Ulman (2015). Over three months and through an alias
Instagram account, Ulman delivered a scripted online performanceof curated images, videos and text that critiqued digital identity,
authenticity and contemporary social relations. In turn, herfollowers became unwitting and unregulated participants who
were implicated in the production and mediation of the work.
The artist activities above involve to a greater or lesser extent
curatorial processes. We can simplify these processes to (1)creating material infrastructure, (2) mutual exchange, (3)establishing situations.
Of course, there are plenty of examples of artists curating indifferent ways, but I think these three are emblematic of acontemporary visual culture that is actively looking to challenge
and reinvent the formal institutional gallery apparatus.

. . . who gets to tell CULTURAL STORIES is now
firmly under the microscope

So where are we in the discipline of music? The critical literatureand constructive application of the curator’s role is not comparable
despite old forms of creation and mediation losing their legitimacy(Malzacher, Tupajic´ and Zanki, 2010, p.2). The conservatoire has
not seen the same separation between producer (composer and/or performer) and its discursive other (musicology aside). Moreover,the institution of art music, and here I am referring to thepredominance of a particular canon of repertoire, the conservatoire
training pathway and the concert hall apparatus (including its
associated etiquettes, practices and ephemera), has up until
now received surprisingly limited critique from its producers.
In the last seven years, there has been some movement toredress this (Andrewes, 2014, pp.103-105; Rutherford-Johnson,
2017, p.136; Hagen and Young, 2020; Farnsworth and Lovell, 2020;
Farnsworth, Jakobsson and Massera, 2021). In 2020 however, it
was dramatically pushed to the top of the agenda with the Black
Lives Matter (BLM) protests. BLM called out the structuralinequalities of many institutions, particularly in the cultural sector.
For the first time it seemed the institution of art music would
have to acknowledge and address its role in permeating a onesided western-centric canon of art music. Forums andorganisations such as The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion inMusic Studies Network (EDIMS) in Music Higher Education(Music HE) and Black Lives in Music (BLiM) in the UK have been
established to do just this. As a consequence, who gets to tell
cultural stories is now firmly under the microscope. It is fair tosay therefore that in a single year the profile of the curator
rapidly gained traction.
A second context we must consider is the current Covid-19
pandemic that has already radically affected cultural production(and who gets to produce it). The headline results of a recent
composer survey published by Sound and Music and Ivors
Academy are stark: over half of respondents earn under £10k forcomposing in a normal (non-pandemic) year; and the three areas
where composers earn most are DIY/self-producing, concerts
including commissions, and education (Sound and Music, 2021).
As Chief Executives Susanna Eastburn MBE and Graham Davies
say in their supporting narrative, ‘the financial circumstances ofthe vast majority of composers are incredibly fragile’ (Ibid.).
Where rapid technological development since the late 1990s(beginning with the launch of Napster in 1999, then Apple iTunes
and iPod in 2001, and social media in the mid-2000s) has released
a truly astonishing scale of digital creativity (Manovich, 2020),
the pandemic has, if anything, accelerated this further (Haferkorn,
Kavanagh and Leak, 2021). How can composer begin to compete
for attention in and amongst this?

I V .

T HE
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DIYHaving now seen examples of creative exchange between art
production and curatorial decision-making, we turn our attention
to the field of music. Historical precedents reveal some collectives
and communities of composers actively, or inadvertently,
critiquing rigid institutional frameworks in a Duchampian mould.
Early 20th century examples include Hugo Ball’s ‘Cabaret Voltaire’and ‘Galerie Dada’, Allan Kaprow and Adrian Henri’s ‘Happenings’,
and George Maciunas’ ‘Fluxconcerts or Aktionen’ and much has
already been written on these. A second avant-garde in the
1960s and 70s, which includes composers Terry Riley, La Monte
Young, Pauline Oliveros, Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, confronted,
dismissed or bypassed conventional apparatus altogether topresent their work. The outputs of the San Francisco Tape Music
Center, Yoko Ono and her Chambers Street loft in New York, andPark Place, The Gallery of Art Research, Inc., were important
contributors and stakeholders.
In the UK, Reich’s rigorous approach inspired the experimental
music scene owing in part to his friendship with composers
Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars and Cornelius Cardew. His andGlass’s composer-led groups were important models for anumber of British composers who were experimenting with andre-evaluating sonic concepts and extended formats away fromthe art music institution (see, for example, The Michael Nyman
Band and The Gavin Bryars Ensemble and later The SteveMartland Band and The Fitkin Band). Their artistic and politicalconcerns challenged established authorities; ‘traditionally passive
onlookers (listeners, audience) could now be empowered
participants, as performers, composers and conductors’ (Gregory,
2004, p.20). This is evident in groups such as the Scratch
Orchestra (founded by Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard
Skempton) and Portsmouth Sinfonia (founded by Bryars).
These examples show how new forms of creation, often
resulting from a growing understanding of context, went hand inhand with alternative ways of presenting work. In the face ofexisting hierarchies and limitations, composers had to develop
new skills to keep editorial control. It is in this expanding rolethat proto-curatorial actions can be glimpsed.

Songs for a Better Future Matel Bejenaru, 2010 © Matel Bejenaru

The arrival of the so-called classical club nights in 1998 onwards
is a uniquely contemporary response to many of the same

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institutional challenges I presented in Section III. Some of theseries no longer exist and others have taken their place. They
are the foundations of the indie-classical scene that is still active
largely in London and New York. The writer Thom Andrewes(2014, pp.134-43) provides a list of notable events in London
from 2004-2014. The artistic direction, production quality andsize, and personal motivations vary yet common practices canbe identified, including:•composer or performer-led (single or group) artistic direction•

informal performance contexts (e.g., clubs, bars andoffsite art spaces)•

do-it-yourself ethos attracting loyal audiences•

short performances and DJ sets alternate with
programming covering electronic club music,
experimental, modernist and core classical repertoire(i.e., pre-20th century)•

Where it gets PARTICULARLY INVENTIVE ( andexciting to listen to ) is in the music’s sharedcharacteristics with electronic club music. It isthe very fabric of the string quartets, concertos
and piano scores that I reviewed.

DJ Yoda and Heritage Orchestra, Dan Stephens, 2007 © Dan Stephensan economics reliant on public funders, private trusts
and foundations and commercial partnership.

The approaches of these platforms diverge, however. One pathway
finds new relevance for old music, and they prioritise informality.
The following examples are a representative sample:‘[The Little Proms] mission is to make it as easy to go toa classical concert as it is to go to an indie gig’ (The Little
Proms, n.d).
‘Classical music concerts can be horrible… The Night
Shift is all about making classical music easy to enjoy’(OAE, n.d).
‘[Yellow Lounge] brings classical music bang up-to-date,leaving a trail of twin-sets, pearls and grey suits in its
wake… Yellow Lounge fuses the greatest international
performers with cutting-edge DJ and VJ sets in urban
spaces’ (Yellow Lounge, n.d).
The examples above fall under what Andrewes describes as arecontextualising or displacing of existing repertoire (2014, p.53).
In my opinion, these motivations suggest a critique of the concert
hall, and its etiquettes in particular, rather than positioning
context at the heart of new artistic creation. Furthermore, they
can be seen not as acts of curating but programming (although
the promoters slip between terms) because they focus onentertainment.

2. I undertook an in-depth
review of ‘Blank Canvas’ aspart of my doctoral research(Dutta, 2018), which
culminated in the 17th edition
at Village Underground in
2013. It is a useful precursor
to the case study in Section V.

The second pathway places greater value on new music and it ishere I would argue curating practices are evident. Representative
examples include ‘London Contemporary Music Festival’,‘Kammer Klang’, ‘Nonclassical’, ‘Faster Than Sound’ and myown platform, ‘Blank Canvas’, that ran from 2007-13 2. Moreconsideration is given to the relationship between site-specificlocation and music on the billing. Tim Rutherford-Johnson (2017,p.41) notices how performed repertoire at ‘Nonclassical’ events
often gives greatest importance to ‘works with a strong rhythmic
profile and a loud dynamic… as do those that do not requireconcentrated listening in service of a continuous musical narrative’.

A brief stylistic analysis of non-classical music
Before we move onto the case study, I want to put forward a
brief analysis of nonclassical music because I feel it closelyaligns with my own music making in bloom. The idea for a nonclassical music is something I inherited from composer Gabriel
Prokofiev. I have adapted the use (and spelling) to reference aparticular music that has its beginnings on the Nonclassicalrecord label.
There are a limited number of what I would describe as nonclassical musical texts. The music is still far from integrated intomusic culture, the market and literature so it is too early to explore
as a technique. Is it a new aesthetic? Andrewes (2014) suggests‘the Nonclassical [sic] aesthetic is all about displacement…
displacing one style of music into the frame or context of another’.
But he does not suggest it requires a new way of listening in
the way that Steve Reich describes minimalism as a gradualprocess. I argued in my doctoral research that non-classicalmusic is a new style with a focus on rhythm and texture. Where
it gets particularly inventive (and exciting to listen to) is in themusic’s shared characteristics with electronic club music. It isthe very fabric of the string quartets, concertos and piano scoresthat I reviewed.

T HE
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CASE STUDY:V .

We also see for the first-time mutual exchange: the reciprocal
relationship between creative and distributive processes. Nonclassical music was written for and first heard in the club context.
For example, Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 1 (2003) andConcerto for Turntables and Orchestra (2006/11) premiered at
Cargo and Scala in London respectively.
Non-classical music lies on the continuum of musicalpostmodernism which has its roots in the counterculture of the
1960s and in turn on experimentalism in the UK, as we saw
earlier. I would even go as far to say it continues the hardcore
continuum as an example of dub’s instrumental turn (Reynolds,
1998). Either way, much has been written of the free exchangeof musical postmodernism (Sande, 2010; Lolavar, 2011;
Rutherford- Johnson, 2013; Andrewes, 2014). Composer Soosan
Lolavar (2011, p.4) attributes this to ‘a largely pluralistic approach
to music as part of a new era of “cultural postmodernism”
which has broken down hitherto boundaries of style, genre,
aesthetic value and audience appreciation’. The critic Alex Ross
(2007, p.542) describes the ‘great fusion’ as one possible
destination for 21st century music with ‘intelligent pop artists
and extroverted composers speaking more or less the samelanguage’. The particular invention within non-classical musicarises from its shared characteristics with electronic club music
and, as I will show in the next chapter, the reciprocal relationshipbetween this particular music making and its exhibition space.
The composers are not using electronic club music as anoccasional effect, such as Thomas Adès (1999) and Dai Fujikura(2006) might, or as crossover (Rutherford-Johnson, 2017, pp.7578). It is idiomatic of their compositional language.

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In this section I bring to life the general principles of mutual exchange andmobility to construct the curating composer in the case study, bloom. Thisshould be read alongside the following materials and the album is available
to listen on streaming services:<http://bloomworks.art>.
1.

Production
bloom (SWD, 2017) is my second studio album and the primary output ofdoctoral research undertaken at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music andDance between 2013-2018, supervised by Dr Dominic Murcott, Head ofComposition and Music Technology at Trinity Laban and Prof Dan Fern,
Professor Emeritus at Royal College of Art. The studio album project is
many-shaped, open-ended and evolving. In the following section, when I
speak of the distribution of bloom, I do so as a composite public outcome
in six manifestations. The following subsections suggest the workflow,
although it is inevitably entangled.

1.1

Research and planning
From the very beginning I sought to establish a web of reference points tointeract with at each stage of the production and distribution of bloom. I
also knew that I would be collaborating with others (Plaid, Manuel Poletti,
Max de Wardener, Treatment Studio) and that creative responsibility would
be shared (i.e., my process was networked). My first curatorial act was tocreate a new situation for them to come together.
I also used Brian Eno’s (1996) idea of ‘edge culture’ to frame the narrativeof the project and I followed the logic of this theoretical idea when composing.
Edge culture works like this: where curators (and here I refer to thosetraditionally based at national institutions) might follow the linear art historicalmethod of canon-forming that tends towards the grande histoire, Eno offers
another way. He prioritises temporary connections and asks us to confer
values that are negotiable, interchangeable and that avoid single narratives(Ibid., p.328). It is a postmodern position, yet it represents how an individual
confronts and engages with the work.

1.2

Defining the sonic entities
I set out to develop software technologies to modify the spectral components
and sonic properties of the piano. I also wanted to design a flexible system
where the electronic output (e.g., the real-time processing of the piano inBloume and whiting flowre) could change within set parameters. Early inthe writing, I could foresee a way of exploiting this flexibility through theprocess of remixing, which would become a way of mediating the work withthe public (Subsection 2.3.1). At the same time, I was also composing witha black box performance space in mind (the new work was first heard at
the ICA in London).

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Distribution
bloom is a composite public outcome in six manifestations,
three of which are ancillary in function (D-F). The six
manifestations are:
A. Recording
B. Performance
C. Interactive Digital Space
D. Newsletter
E. Film
F. Workshop

2.1

Manifestation A: Recording
I released bloom in limited-edition vinyl and streaming formats
on 2 November 2017. Vinyl would of course fix the runningorder, but I could exploit the streaming format to expand thework into an open-ended curated playlist.

2.1.1 Casting the studio album for release
I worked with the stylistic features of the new works to plan therunning order of the studio album. I considered the shape, flow,
tonality and balance of durations of the complete listening
experience. Importantly, I used the stylistic features of nonclassical in choosing to record this was written by hand by David
Lang (2003)—as an example of notated minimalism. It has arestless character and the stuttered rhythms echo the breakbeats
in A Higher Sense of Time. The slowly thinning texture of thelast eighteen bars acts as a natural outro so I positioned it at theend of the record.
2.1.2 Album as curated playlist
Usually, the public release of the studio album in these formats
would complete this first manifestation. However, I have since
turned my attention to exploiting streaming technology to deliver
bloom as a curated playlist. Gavin Wade says the artist-curator
applies ‘curatorial strategies as a way of presenting themselves,
alongside other artists, to create composite public outcomes’(O’Neill, 2012, p.105). I selected existing material and recorded
new pieces (guided again by the research network, edge culture
frame, and stylistic features of non-classical music) to extend
the listening experience of the original studio album and widen
the context and historicity of the works. This is an open-ended
process and something I continue to add to and change today.
In doing so I momentarily connect different music, hopefully
illuminating my own, while knowing that audiences elsewhere
will be doing something similar on their playlists.

Fig. 1-1 ‘bloom LIVE’ at the ICA. Photograph Michael Robert Williams, 2017 © Michael Robert Williams

2.2

Manifestation B: Performance
I created the audio-visual show, ‘bloom LIVE’ (Fig. 1-1), to givematerial shape to the edge culture narrative. I followed an
iterative curating model (Paul, 2008, pp.39-40) where outcomesfrom other manifestations (workshops and remix competitions,for example) or previous performances-as-versions have adynamic effect on the next performance. ‘bloom LIVE’ shifts
and morphs over time. The different performance contexts
provide another opportunity to foreground the historicity of the
new body of work and its visual language with electronic clubmusic, minimalism and more. The spread of music encounteredin ‘bloom LIVE’ inter-relates with activities taking place inmanifestations A and C. New material is gradually introduced
into performance (which in turn folds back into the playlist andvice versa) and this all reinforces my narrative.
I found a rare opportunity in the pandemic to devise a newiteration, ‘bloom LIVE/STREAM’, which was broadcast in
November 2020 during the second lockdown. Where in the live
show visuals were generated and mixed in real time in reaction
to the audio data, in ‘bloom LIVE/STREAM’, we pulled apart theoriginal visual content and brought in live camera into the mix,
so I became an important part of the visual experience (Fig. 1-2).

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Fig. 1-3 (Un)controlled activity in ‘bloom LIVE’.

Fig. 1-2 Still taken from ‘bloom LIVE/STREAM’. Treatment Studio, 2020 © Studio Will Dutta

What does the next iteration look like? I am already working ona hybrid approach to the concert experience, where in-person
audiences are augmented with those watching online; eachexperiencing the unique performer-spectator spectator-spectator
moments that mark out the quality of liveness (Auslander, 1999).

2.2.1 (Un)controlled activity
At this point I want to show how I sought to incorporate controlled
and uncontrolled activity in performance. This was important tome because it is how I dramatised different tensions. In thefollowing two diagrams (Figs. 1-3 and 1-4) I set out two axes,
where the activity on the vertical axis is controlled and thehorizontal uncontrolled or unregulated. In ‘bloom LIVE’, for example,
this almost balances (Fig. 1-3). Fig. 1-4 shows examples of thecontrolled and uncontrolled activity in the recorded works.

Fig. 1-4 (Un)controlled activity in the recording.

2.3

Manifestation C: Interactive Digital Space‘bloomworks’ <http://www.bloomworks.art> is ‘the technologised interface
between physical and virtual spaces’ (Dziekan, 2007, no page number). It is
the hub of the project where all signs lead to. It has four main functions:•

Documentation (presenting materials in their optimum format)•

Research (providing critical and historical context to create meaning)•

Pedagogy (examining organising structures of the project andselect works)•

2.4

Manifestation D: Newsletter
My quarterly newsletter, ‘Edge Culture’, is a long form journal that I use tocommunicate ideas and context directly to my audience. Each journal isedited jointly with a featured guest. My role is to choose the guest in linewith my research interests set out in subsection 1.1 and to edit the text.
The activity is unregulated (it sits on the uncontrolled axis): once the topic
is agreed guest editors are responsible for selecting material and writing
text. In a small way, the newsletter is an example of a collaborative
curatorial platform.

2.5

Manifestation E: Film
Film is another medium where I can bring to life stories that relate to theresearch context. I am currently working on a series of shorts that explore‘Dub, Migrations, Pirate Radio and UK Sound System Culture’, ‘1960s New
York’, and ‘Experimentalism in the UK’. I do not foreground my work inthese films so in a way this distributes my work only indirectly.

2.6

Manifestation F: Workshop
The third and final ancillary manifestation is the ‘Curating Music’ workshopthat I continue to deliver in conjunction with performances of ‘bloom LIVE’.
I designed the workshop as an introduction to the curating composer
through the prism of bloom. I have since invited participants to reflect onand contribute to the six manifestations: their ideas provide further instruction
for the development of the project overall. This is another example of theiterative curating model being applied.

2.7

Self-producing
Behind the theoretical ideas and creative acts lie the more mundane
aspects of the curator’s role. The activity in the previous section could nothave happened without a fundraising strategy, the logistics of project,
event and tour management, the promotional campaign. Partway throughthe process of ideation, I began to work on funding applications. I findthem helpful in making me think about a project holistically. There is stillsome mystery to what makes a strong application bid. I tend to pay very
close attention to the criteria, adding or removing modules from the projectin line with a potential funder’s interests. Sometimes their interests
positively shape the project. The modular approach also means I can resize
and adapt the project as and when they are successful or not.

Interpretation (inviting user interaction and engagement)

How is the relationship between communication and meaning and social
participation curated? Audiences enter ‘bloomworks’ from a variety ofroutes be it some of the other manifestations or even the humble postcard.
Visual artist Roberta Smith (1993) describes such ephemera as ancillary
and collective artworks that prepare the receiver for the main thing.

The original is the genetic precursor
and the remixes are many different
forms (mutations).
2.3.1 Remixing as open-source music making
The invitation to participate and co-create is communicated through an ongoing open call for remixes and I have on occasions worked with students
at several universities. I mentioned in subsection 1.2 how my collaborator,
Manuel Poletti, and I built a system of real-time processing that isinherently flexible. However, at the point of recording the state of theelectronics becomes fixed. To navigate this, I looked to the virtual space asa suitable way of mediating the body of work: I invite users to submit theirown remixes of the piece. They can either use the stems we provide (fromPoletti’s software technologies) or they can create their own following asimilar aesthetic approach. I believe this gets around the problem of a fixedrecording because there is now a selection of versions of equal value tolisten to. The original is the genetic precursor (Fern, 2015) and the remixes
are many different forms (mutations). This is another example of mutual
exchange, where the distributive process affects the compositional act. I
see this as a small-scale open-source response to music making and there
is growing discourse on remixing as an object, process and postmodernist
culture (Lolavar, 2011; Andrewes, 2014; Sullivan, 2014). I select and upload
remixes to the site over the lifespan of the project and in return users get
their own page and revolving vinyl. Some remixes are arranged as live
versions, and these are worked into ‘bloom LIVE’.

Once I secured my first funder, I commissioned Max de Wardener tocompose two new pieces for piano and I built the team of freelancers to
support the different aspects of delivery. However, funding was as usual
quite tight, so their time limited. I had to juggle most of the tasks with thecreative work. As I have become more experienced, I know where mystrengths lie and when I am in danger of overreaching, but I was stretching
myself all the time with bloom. Inevitably, the curating composer develops
a wide set of skills, which is incredibly useful but a drawback to do this canbe the tendency to think you can do it all yourself.

P21

P23

Abstracting general principles
In this case study, I hope I have now shown how a composer
might use curatorial design to produce and distribute a new
body of work. I transferred methods originally worked up in thevisual arts into the musical domain and in doing so I constructed
a new role that I name ‘curating composer’. I developed material
and immaterial infrastructure in creating this output. I value andattend to each manifestation of bloom as an artistic product orwork in its own right, deliberately making redundant potential
hierarchies of the album over performance, for example. I havebuilt a system of mutual exchange and I move freely between
creative acts and the curatorial situation.
My role in bloom, sees the two principles of mutual exchange
and mobility in action, showing the curating composer to beoriginal with a distinct set of practices. I also took a networked
position; that the curatorial function should be active in bringing
about a unique and temporary situation for others to respond to.
We see evidence for this in the significant and original contributionsof Plaid, Manuel Poletti, Max de Wardener, Treatment Studioand the many remixers who have submitted music to the projectso far.

Fig. 1-5

Fig. 1-6

V I .

T HE
CU R AT I N GCOM P OS E R
CONCLUSION
Let us now return to the questions I posed at the beginning of
the paper. What are some of the curatorial strategies andprocesses in contemporary visual culture that might help develop
the curating composer’s role? I investigated contemporary visual
culture to uncover useful curatorial language, working methods
and strategies to transfer into the discipline of music. How havecomposers applied curatorial strategies in new and experimental
music practices? I looked at a selection of composers applying
curatorial strategies in the presentation of their work. I showedsome of the limitations in these responses so that in answering
question three I could present a fully realised example of what
the curating composer could look like. In the example of bloom,
I made macro and micro curatorial decisions to affect how thematerial was produced and distributed. These included curating
the stylistic features of the music; using iterative, modular andself-reflexive methodologies; and dimensioning the exhibition of
the work across multiple manifestations. I showed music andcuratorial practice converging. For me, the diagrams (Figs. 1-5 and1-6) are a useful way of thinking about my creative process: they
compare bloom with my first studio album, Parergon, released
in 2012. I take this further still in the doughnut model (Fig. 1-7)
to show the general principles alongside my core skills as a
curating composer.

The role too has the potential to be further
defined by underrepresented, underserved
and marginalised voices

The Little Prince, Studio Will Dutta, 2016 © Studio Will Dutta

A secondary output of this paper is the first outline of nonclassical music. In my analysis, I showed non-classical music to
be a new style of art music, grounded in a context of notatedminimalism and electronic club music, where rhythm and texture
are the stylistic focal points and a postmodernist attitude toaesthetics and institutions prevails.

P25

I want to highlight an unexpected strand of rebelliousness andsubversion that is present in the study. In the iconoclastic
examples, the practitioners reacted against the seemingly fixed
or impenetrable institutional systems. Similarly, composer-led
platforms of the indie-classical scene had to do it themselvesbecause doors were closed to them, or they wanted to confront
the institution and its associated ephemera and etiquettes.
Institutional critique is at once progressive and subversive. That
these artists are now part of the institution shoes how change
and progress can be made (i.e., be confident in your artistic
position, go it alone or form a scene, revitalise the institution).

ARTISTIC IDENTITY
PRINCIPLESMUTUAL EXCHANGE

S T R AT E GY

I NT E LL E C T UALP R OP E R T Y

P R OJ E C T
MANAGE ME NTINC OMEGE NE R AT I ON

P R ODUC I NG

MAR K E T ING

MOBILITY

Fig. 1-7

3. I was struck how in
preparing this article the indieclassical scene was broadly
representative in terms ofgender from the beginning (forexample, Lucy Railton is thefounder of Kammer
Klang/London Contemporary
Music Festival and Joana
Seguro Faster Than Sound,both influential in the UK, andSarah Kirkland Snider CoArtistic Director at New
Amsterdam Records in the US)
and that this has accelerated asorganisations haveprofessionalised (e.g.,
Nonclassical signing up to
Sound and Music’s Fair AccessPrinciples in 2021). But I
recognise the need to do more
to make the scene open andinclusive. It is incumbent onanyone in a curatorial role, nomatter how small thecommunity, to ask thequestion, what are the barriers
to inclusion in my programme?

What might the curating composer look like in the future?
Already in the three years since I first devised the role, I haveseen an increase in composers who are self-producing theirwork and others (in my role as Co-Head of Artist Development
at Sound and Music). The role too has the potential to be further
defined by underrepresented, underserved and marginalised
voices 3. We need their contributions to revitalise the institution.
They will almost certainly continue to expand the dimensioning
possibilities of rapidly evolving technologies, including 5G, nonfungible tokens and blockchain, mixed reality, artificial
intelligence, video game engines and more besides, which offer
unique and under explored opportunities.
I will finish by saying that I want to show the curating composer
to be significant in historical terms and that institutions(including the training pathways such as conservatoires) ignore
them at their peril. It is vital a new generation of curating
composers provide aesthetic and entrepreneurial leadership inwhat has become a bewilderingly fragmented landscape. If thisspeaks to you, then go on and be a creative force in 21st
century new music culture.

Dr Will Dutta is Artistic Director of Studio Will Dutta, Co-Headof Artist Development at Sound and Music and Module Teacher(Developing Artist) at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music andDance.
The research in this paper is an update of original commentary I
submitted as part of my PhD. Therefore, I want to restate mythanks to Dominic Murcott, Dan Fern and Jonathan Clarke for
their supervision and support. I also want to thank the team at
Sound and Music for stretching my thinking, and thank the many
composers I encounter: I see on a daily basis the relentlessefforts of composers choosing to self-produce in order to makethings happen, sustain careers and enable the artistic ecologythat goes with it to thrive.

P27

P29

Glossary
Throughout this paper I make reference to a number of concepts, some ofwhich I have transferred from the visual arts. In doing so I have claimed yet
another curatorial position. The following glossary is a list of terminology
with their meanings explained in the context of this study. Together they
formulate my personal construction of the curating composer.
Artist-Curator: A creative practitioner who uses the physical andintellectual experience of an exhibition to present themselves alongsideother artists
Art music: Notated music that takes an established form to a lessor or
greater extent to communicate artistic expression
Curate: To authoritatively select objects in relationship to a given context
prioritising analytic inquiry and theoretical coherence
Curatorial design: Contemporary curating features that affect theaesthetic experience of the exhibition
Digital: Used to subsume the full range of technologies around computers
and the Internet
Dimensioning: A term used by curator and academic Vince Dziekan todescribe the enlarging of the exhibition platform to cover physical andvirtual spaces

Mediation: Twofold meaning: it can be used to refer to education-based
practices and/or the provision of ephemera ahead of and during exhibitions
that include ongoing cultural dialogue between curators, artists and audiences.
In the discipline of music, it is often used to mean the transmission ofmusic from originator to listener via one form of media or another
Mediatisation: Transference from one medium to another and often
associated with artistic dissemination and distribution
Mobility: the free movement between creative acts and the curatorialsituation
Mutual exchange: the reciprocal relationship between creative anddistributive processes
Networked: Distributed structure whereby creative responsibility is shared
between teams

Edge culture: A term created by composer Brian Eno to describe analternative approach to art history that avoids notions of absolute value

Non-classical music: A new style of art music, grounded in a context ofnotated minimalism and electronic club music, where rhythm and texture
are the stylistic focal points and a postmodernist attitude to aesthetics andinstitutions prevails

Exhibition: A temporary public platform within which an overarching
curatorial framework is provided

Playback: The act of causing notation, recorded sounds or pictures to beheard or seen again

Institution of art: The apparatus for producing and distributing art and art
ideas that prevail at any given time and determine the reception of works

Programme: To select objects or musical works that privilege
entertainment over theoretical inquiry

Institutional critique: Critical examination of the parameters and apparatusof the institution of art
Liveness: Framing device that prioritises temporal co-presence over spatial
co-presence as the fundamental experience of the live between audiencesand eventP31

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S T U D I O W I L L D U T TA
In association withstudiowilldutta.art
Blank Canvas at Village Underground, Howard Melnyczuk, 2013 © Howard Melnyczuk

T HE
CU R AT I N GCOM P OS E RStudio Will Dutta, © 2021