ARTICULATE OPEN CLASSROOMS
Artist-researchers at the Conservatoire as well as external researchers present their research to students, by elaborating on the scope of their project, introducing their methods, research processes, or (preliminary) conclusions, performing an artistic result or by supervising a workshop.
OPEN CLASSROOMS MUSIC
Meeting your Digital Shadow / 14:00 – 15:00
by NICOLAS KUMMERT
Witte foyer, Conservatoire
NICOLAS KUMMERT invites you to delve into his research for one hour. All musicians are invited to bring their instrument(s) and join in for short duo improvisations with electronics. Nicolas will manipulate the improvising musician’s sound in realtime and the audience will be invited to join the conversation and reflection over the interaction that occurs between the two participants. In this particular setup, the musician concedes part of the control of his instrument to electronic modulation and the two artists share agency over the ephemeral hybrid instrument. Or does the digital shadow possess its own personality?
Play of Metaphor / 14:00 – 15:30
PRESENTATION and MASTERCLASS-WORKSHOP
by EMIL GRYESTEN
Room 57, Conservatoire
‘Play of Metaphor’ offers an innovative approach to classical piano and chamber music, based on GREYSTEN’s docARTES research ‘Metaphor and the Erotics of Interpretation’. The project examines how metaphor and analogy shape 19th-century performance, guiding articulation, phrasing, and emotional expression.
The session invites students to treat musical performance as a space for metaphorical play, where sound becomes fluid, embodied, and shaped by creative analogies. Participants will explore new interpretive tools to expand their artistic expression beyond conventional analysis.
Build your own Robert Schumann / 14:00 – 16:00
LECTURE-PERFORMANCE, OPEN REHEARSAL
by ALASTAIR MATTHEWS
Room 139, Conservatoire
In this workshop, the audience will help develop experimental performances of Robert Schumann’s ‘Du Ring an meinem Finger’ from ‘Frauenliebe und Leben’ op.42. We grapple together with the potentially discriminatory implications of the song, closely analyzing the interaction between music and text. We then examine how different performance approaches might lead to new critical perspectives on the song’s meaning, taking us beyond thinking about performance as a faithful interpretation of the composer’s intentions, to explore the performer’s power to transform the music’s meaning.
The workshop forms part of ALASTAIR MATTHEWS PhD research into how musical analysis might be used as a tool in experimental performances of 19th century repertoire.
House music. Reimagining the domestic musical soundscape of 19th Century Belgium / 16:00 – 17:00
LECTURE
by PAULINE LEBBE, STEPHAN WEYTJENS
Room 57, Conservatoire
What if there were no radios, no recordings, no mp3's or streaming channels, no cd's and no vinyls? What if music existed only live? Until the beginning of the 20th century, this was reality. Music-making happened not only in practice rooms, music schools and concert halls, but anywhere we listen to recorded music nowadays, including in the intimate context of the home. This private side of music history is poorly documented by heterogeneous and fragmented source material, and this creates a negative feedback loop where lesser-known music and musicians remain always less known. Join us on a journey to the domestic soundscape of 19th century Belgium, to escape that loop.