title: From Nowhere to Now Here: A Journey from Performer to Collaborative Artist
Creators: name: Henbest, Caroline
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: creative process
subject: musical duos
subject: musicians
subject: movement theatre artist
subject: chamber music
subject: poems
subject: compositional processes
subject: Australian

description: This research project involved the creation of a collaborative composition titled From Nowhere to Now Here. It was first performed at Tempo Rubato in Brunswick, Melbourne on 18 April 2021. This supporting exegesis examines the creative process, which involved myself as violist working closely with seven selected collaborators – six musicians and a movement theatre artist – as we created a series of musical duos. The compositional process involved the participants exploring how to create a work of chamber music – in this case a cycle of 14 duos, plus an improvised Prelude and Postlude – using a collection of creative stimuli, which included images, words and musical phrases as the basis of our inspiration. The collaborations involved many unconventional ways to creatively interact. I set out to incorporate the musical personality of each collaborator together with my own. As such, the composition goes beyond a conventional score both in its notation and its nature. We developed the collaborative composition through a series of workshops, primarily using the video-conferencing platform Zoom (Yuan, 2011) (as a result of the participants being unable to meet in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic). In light of this unexpected format, improvisation proved to be a crucial in the compositional process. In addition, a number of the duos were improvised in performance. Others contained minor elements of improvisation from one or other of the players. The scores vary in presentation, some are traditionally notated and some are graphic. In performance, the pieces were interspersed with eight poems, composed and read by the participants. Each poem was accompanied by movement theatre. Behind the musicians, and visible to the audience, one of the performers created another work of art and movement theatre by wrapping a pin board in coloured yarn in the shape of a bicycle. My research was principally related to the musical composition and, as such, in this exegesis, I have concentrated on its creation. As research through practice, my exegesis, along with the accompanying video of the performance, as well as tables and scores, demonstrates how our work came into being, examining the process from conception to performance from the perspective of the performer/composer. Using qualitative research methods, I have explored autoethnographically how I developed the work. Through self-reflection, description and analysis, the compositional processes have been explored. Using the methods of ethnography and video ethnography I have chronicled how my collaborators reacted, responded and operated, as we played with ideas, rehearsed and performed. During the course of this project, all participants endured a succession of state lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these were often lengthy periods of time when we were only able to communicate in an online format. As such, the creation and performance of the work, against all odds, is a testament to the resilience of this particular group of Australian creative artists.