Transient: Creative Affordances of Recontextualized Musical Elements in Transcultural Composition, Improvisation and Performance

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

This interdisciplinary artistic research aims to create methodologies for the composition and performance of transcultural music that challenges representational cultural in-group/out-group aesthetic dichotomies, perhaps being fully representational only of itself. By examining the challenges and revealing the creative potential of negotiating and integrating culturally diverse perspectives, the research seeks to stimulate and innovate new discoveries and forms of expression. Drawing from the fields of music theory, musicology, psychology of perception, musical semiotics, anthropology and acoustemology, I position myself within the frame of reference of a third culture individual whose idiosyncratic cultural hybridity defies and arguably transcends explicit in-group/out-group binaries. I seek a musical corollary of this hybridity by examining an intersection of affordance theory, cultural fusion theory, modular theory and theory of musical semiotics and, as composer and performer, its applications to the recontextualization of musical elements and phenomena related to aesthetic practices from my autobiographical environments: Levantine and khaliji Arabic art and folk music, Zanzibari taarab, American jazz, and European and American art and popular music. Proficiency will be demonstrated through two new longform compositions for transcultural ensemble and their respective studio recordings and one improvised solo studio recording made available to the public, two peer-reviewed published articles focusing on analysis of uncovered musical-aesthetic phenomena and developed compositional methodologies, and a summary thesis aiming to re-examine notions of aesthetic representation and provide tools for composer-performers liminally positioned between cultures.

SUPERVISORY TEAM
Dr. Kristiina Ilmonen (chair), Professor of Folk Music, Sibelius Academy;
Dr. Lauri Suurpää, Professor of Music Theory, Sibelius Academy;
Dr. Sergio Castrillón Arcila, Lecturer of Global Music, Sibelius Academy

SPECIALIST ADVISORS
Dr. Eero Tarasti, University of Helsinki;
Dr. Katarina Miljkovic, New England Conservatory;
Dr. Nima Janmohammadi, New England Conservatory;
Dr. Paolo S.H. Favéro, University of Antwerp;
Dr. Nizar Rohana, independent researcher;
Simon Shaheen, M.M., Berklee College of Music;
Ahmad al-Khatib, M.A., University of Gothenburg

COLLABORATING MUSICIANS
Jason Palmer (USA) | Hermon Mehari (USA) – trumpet, flugelhorn
Robin Eubanks (USA) | Bulut Gülen (Turkey) – trombone
Layth Sidiq (Jordan/Iraq) – violin
Naseem Alatrash (Palestine) – cello
Utar Artun (Turkey) | Maxim Lubarsky (Ukraine) – piano
Kyle Miles (USA) – bass
Keita Ogawa (Japan) – percussion
Vancil Cooper (USA) | Zach Mullings (USA) – drums
+ others to be included as research progresses

Kuvagalleria

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