Reactions artistic-reflective project Landscapes

Reactions from the coordinator and the workshop leaders
All first year students of the five courses of the Prince Claus Conservatoire came together in four groups and created and performed compositions in a location which is unusual for them. This project, a regular part of the first year curriculum, was developed by the lectorate together with the department of "professional development" of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London (GSMD) five years ago. Workshop leaders from the GSMD come to Groningen every year to give shape to the project with the students.

Tine Stolte: ‘It was great to see how everyone inspired and motivated each other’

Tine Stolte, coordinator: The orientation week has always been a ‘rich’ project, but this season it had an extra dimension because of the contribution of the Joint Master. Bachelor students met fellow-students and teachers from their own institution, who already had experience with this special kind of learning, composing and dealing with an audience. An important contribution to the students’ experience of the term ‘making music. The project is now more embedded in the curriculum and enthusiastic students have the prospect of being able to continue this way of working within the programme.

It was moving to see with how much care, attention and a great deal of personal quality the Joint Master students informed their fellow-students about the elderly people in the nursing home and the children in the primary school where the compositions were to be performed at the end of the week. It was great how this colourful mix of bachelor students, Joint Master students, workshop leaders and members of the Creative Ensemble of very different nationalities, inspired and motivated each other throughout the creation of the compositions. Highlights for me were the performances. Eighty students in a nursing home in itself is already quite special. But students who made a composition especially for the elderly people, who were playing while standing in the middle of their audience and let them sing along was an unforgettable experience.

At the primary school, again, we heard remarkable music pieces with atmospheric impressions of the desert and the ice age. Enthusiastic kids who joined in, producing sounds with balloons and texts which ended with an enormous ‘big bang’. The students were moved when the children sang two songs for them by Annie M.G. Schmidt with great enthusiasm. The power of people making music again gave us unforgettable moments.

Workshop leader Marc van Roon: "What a week!’

Marc: Being able to reflect on one's profession and one's motivation in the inspiring company of peers, teachers and a unique audience gives us the chance to deal with important questions.It was a week never to forget and I am looking forward to next year already.

I was one of the workshop leaders and I was preparing myself for an intense week-long adventure with twenty students. They turned out to be the serious and gentle kind. It was a treat to work with them on the transformation of the slightly abstract metaphorical theme 'Landscape' into a professional performance. The performance on the last day at the Coendershof centre and the Oosterhogebrug School were touching and quite creative. Luckily, I could share the responsibility of guiding my group with Philip Curtis - a teacher in the Joint Music Masters programme - and Doretta Caramaschi. She is one of the four students who are currently enrolled in the pilot year of the Joint Music Master. 

Next to being a workshop leader, I am coordinator of the Joint Music Master, and as such I was also dealing with the performance of the four pilot students. Besides Doretta there were Janneke Hoogeveen, Andrew Lipow and Maaike Oosterhaven. Their assignment was to assist the workshop leaders and demonstrate their skills in - and understanding of - the various aspects of 'leading and guiding' and 'performance and communication'. One of their assignments which focussed on the communication of a project for a large audience was to give a powerpoint presentation about the two performance venues. Doretta and Janneke presented the Coendershof venue and Maaike and Andrew told us about the Oosterhogebrug school. Both pairs did really well. For the first year students this information was really important for the preparation of the performances. The assignments and performances were observed critically by both workshop leaders and Renee Jonker for a final assessment of the first semester. Renee is coordinator of the Joint Music Master for the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. Hij had been invited to participate during this week and act as a kind of 'overseer' of the whole project, and also as the main assessor of the four students.

The week gave us good insights into the process of assessing and the way to go about it in the future. Overall, the students did well and showed skills in presentation technique and in leading the workshop groups. I enjoyed the whole week tremendously. Being able to reflect on one's profession, one's art and one's motivation in the inspiring company of peers, teachers and a unique audience can be a highly valuable experience for all. It gives us the opportunity to reflect and ask ourselves questions such as: why do I do what I do? What kind of musician am I? What is my audience? Which creative processes fit me? I am certain our collective experiences during this week brought us closer to the answers to these questions. Let's do it again next year!

External observer
As a guest teacher from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Renee Jonker was present for the duration of a week to observe the students in the pilot of the Joint Master and work on the assessment.

Renee Jonker: "A week filled to the brim with learning experiences"

Guest teacher Renee Jonker: With this orientation week for first year students and the approach with the Joint Master students the Prince Claus Conservatoire is showing again how much it is at the forefront of innovation in professional music education. After the usual surprise and insecurity, for example about improvisation, it was great to see how quickly the new students got the hang of things.

The challenging way of working, in which the first year students were stimulated by the workshop leaders and the Joint Master students as assistants, was a new way of learning for many of them. Pleasantly confused and pretty shaken up concerning their chosen course, the students finally gave in. Not least by the inspirational workshop leaders. Partly because of the input of the Joint Master students and the workshop leaders who supervised the structure and intervened when necessary, sometimes music pieces with a length of 45 minutes were created and performed completely by heart. Music pieces that were interesting and, judging from the reactions of the audience, were also moving.

What gave the project even greater value were the presentations at the primary school and in the nursing home. For first year students as well as for Joint Master students it was a challenge to put what they had learned into practice in direct contact with an audience. To receive the response of a very interested audience as a starting musician not only shapes you, it is also a great kick. I have seen over eighty music students at work for whom the world was a whole lot bigger for a week than the small confines of the study room in which we are used to locking ourselves up.

Experiences of the students

JM student Janneke Hoogeveen: 'Landscapes was a very intensive and inspirational experience that held up a mirror to me as a workshop leader.'

For me the mirror was in the opportunity to work with very professional people, to talk with them and learn from them. What is involved in leading a group of students, what do you come across, how do you deal with this, how do you come to a composition from nothing and which skills do you need as a workshop leader in which situations? An important skill I had to use was the communication with the target group en to get in tune with them. What kind of people are the residents of the Coendershof? How do you take their needs into account while composing? How do you involve them while you are playing? What do they like? What don’t they like? Which effect do certain kinds of music have on them?

For me the week was a moment where various elements came together and this gave me an impulse for further growth. I could mention quite a few learning moments that I would like to concentrate on in the coming time. These are for example composition (especially in groups), musical imagination, musical skills (being able to play more easily, but especially daring to), confidence when I am in front of a group, improvisation (and generating material) and the English language. But what I would like especially is get more insight into how a good workshop is created and further develop the skills you need to do this.

One of the most inspirational moments for me was the performance at the nursing home. At that moment it became very clear to me that the larger part of the students suddenly understood what the project was about and completely went for it. Especially the moment where our students went into the audience to sit with the residents and play and sing together was quite wonderful. It helped remind me what it is I most like to do. For me the collaboration with the English workshop leader was a unique opportunity to work one on one with a specialist in the field. It is great to work so closely together with someone with this kind of experience and knowledge in this area and so experience at first hand everything that happens in such a process and be able to discuss it.

On the whole I was very satisfied with the results we achieved with the students. They composed a piece which they were involved with from the beginning. During this process they got to know other ways of making music, improvising, but also with new sounds. All and all this worked very well to broaden their horizons. Especially in the beginning the students tended to come up with very tonal things and to qualify everything that was less tonal as not good or not beautiful. And quite often students did not know what to do or play. As time went by many were able to shake off these ideas which restricted their freedom of thinking and this came back in the evaluation: at first some students were insecure, but eventually most of them were very positive about their experiences during this week. Looking at music from a social point of view was one of the targets for me and my fellow-students in the Joint Master. What kind of music do people really like? How do they respond to certain kinds of music? Is this something good or bad or neither? It even went so far that students regularly questioned certain elements in the music: was this good from the point of view of the audience? This way we wanted to introduce the students to a wider meaning of the terms music and making music.

First year student Alfons Berghuis: "I was surprised by the compositions of others."

Alfons: I really enjoyed getting to know the students from other departments because it confronted me with other ways of thinking about music. For jazz and classical musicians it is very instructive to work together. Jazz musicians were much more capable of improvising while classical musicians had to write down the notes sometimes. I discovered that working together with different kinds of musicians can give results which are better than what everyone might be able to achieve individually. Quite often I was surprised about the compositions of others. You see that a new group of people always needs time to get used to each other to be able to work together, but this can lead to the most wonderful things. It was refreshing to be flung into the deep with a group of new people for an assignment. Working together, speaking English all the time and the new way of working were all very instructive. And starting with almost nothing: in the beginning we had only six notes to a chord we had to use in the melody. We also had a common theme: Landscapes. From this we departed to give a presentation together with a final product that was satisfying to the whole group.

I thought the workshop leaders were very professional. The Joint Master student who worked as a workshop leader with us had active input during the week. She worked together with the workshop leader from London, Guy Wood, on propositions for the compositions and she made sure the students’ ideas had a place in the final composition. Guy supervised the whole process. He made sure there was good progress and let us do what we wanted wherever possible. He stopped us, for example, if he felt we were on the wrong track.

The presentations in the nursing home and at the primary school were interactive and I thought the contact with the groups was an enriching experience. During the presentations they sometimes sang along. In the nursing home after the presentation I chatted with some of the old people about the music and about their lives. And during the presentation at the primary school the children were involved in the music as much as possible. They sang along and did rhythm exercises. We also gave them balloons with which they made music at the beginning and at the end.

I look back with a great deal of pleasure on the week itself and also on the final presentations. All in all I think we booked a fine result. Our point of departure was a theme and a few notes and we ended with a whole music piece of five parts with exercises for the children. The whole process was very instructive and interesting. So, a good experience in which we learned to make music based on improvisation and collaboration with musicians from all departments of the conservatoire.

Member of the JM Creative Ensemble René van Munster: "We are all very interested in the kind of work the Joint Master trains for, so for us it was a great experience in more than one way!'

René: The week was great to do, it places you as a conservatoire student in a completely different context. This stimulates your thinking about who you are as a musician and how you want to communicate this through your music. It was the second time I took part in the orientation week, the first time I was a first year student, the second time I was a member of the creative ensemble, which is the regular ensemble the Joint Master students work with in the weekly lessons with their teachers. We are all very interested in the kind of work the Joint Master trains for and which is being done during one of these artistic weeks. Actually our function is a double one, because we also learn a lot from this ourselves! We hope there will be many more projects like these!

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