The Virtual Music Project (part one introduction).

Introduction 

 

The Virtual Music Project continues to create music together
even though there are empty auditoriums across the country

 

Dan Harding is the Deputy Director of Music at University of Kent. His Cellular Dynamics, project which explores ways to combine science and music, was performed at Beach Creative in 2018. Dan has kindly agreed to keep our blog readers up to date through regularly sharing the results of an innovative musical collaboration using sound cloud software.

 

 Dan has looked the impact of self isolation and social distancing has had on the creative arts and how people are finding ways of working together. He explains below:
For the Music Department here at the University of Kent (I use the word ‘here’ in the context of working from home - we no longer need to take work home with us, it’s here with us all the time at the moment…!), finding new ways of working and performing together has been at the forefront of our thinking since the culture-shift began around three weeks ago. Key questions have emerged: how do we keep student, staff and community musicians engaged under the current conditions ? How can we keep people working together ? How do we boost morale’ ?

 One of the ways in which we’re doing this is through the Virtual Music Project, which launched on Friday 27th March in order to create a virtual performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria, a masterwork of the Baroque era, which requires choral singers, soloists and instrumentalists. Gone are the ensemble rehearsals and the choir practices with which we would normally have put the performance together; instead, we’re encouraging musicians amongst the University community to get involved by downloading the music, learning and recording it at home, and submitting it - the idea is to bring all these separate recordings together, and combine them into a digital ensemble performance. Whilst nothing can, of course, ever replace the immediacy and the energy of communal rehearsals, what this project does afford is the chance for people to use their time in self-isolation to continue learning, practicing and performing music, to maintain their skills and their levels of ability, and to feel they are still participating in a shared musical endeavor even whilst we are all shut up in our homes. And it’s that sense of working together as part of a combined artistic project, of being part of something alongside other musicians and performers, that is so sorely lacking in these times. The arts, and music especially, thrives on combined endeavor, on the thrill of accomplishment that comes in delivering a performance of which you were a part.
 

 

Melody Brooks violin,
an MA student reading Psychology.

Flo Peycelon violin

Below is a link to a brief excerpt from an early layering of some of the tracks so far.

https://soundcloud.com/daniel-harding-90933651/virtual-music-project-vivaldi-gloria-first-movement-excerpt

Lin to The Virtual Music Project Facebook Page www.facebook.com/UoKVirtualMusicProject/