Collaborating with other art forms can unlock the potential of contemporary music

Cross art form collaborations

Combining music and film, music and visuals or music and dance in a contemporary music event, can attract a wider audience, and bring new perspectives to everyone involved.

Mixing art forms in a concert can serve as a bridge to close the gaps between musical works. Often, crossing art forms can make the entire concert flow a work in itself, in which the programming, the performance and the effects melts together.

However, cooperation with other art forms also raises a number of challenges and questions for the musicians. Who rules over a work of art you create together, how do you find the visual expression that matches the music best – and how do you avoid that video, graffiti or dance just becomes a superimposed effect that really has no interest for the audience?

Through practical experiments and exchange of experience NewAud helped contemporary ensembles to make use of the fusion between music and other arts.

Resources

  • NewAud Evaluation Report

    The final report sums up the outcome of the NewAud project. It evaluates the results regarding audience development, the cooperation of the ensembles, as well as the ensembles' artistic development throughout the project.

  • Getting Bigger Audiences by Mixing Art Forms

    This document contains the presentation slides from a talk by arts consultant Heather Maitland on how to gain a bigger audience by mixing art forms.

  • Dance, Performance and New Music

    The Polish ensemble Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej addressed varied groups of audiences for their concert as part of an international festival for dance and performance. Young people interested in dance and performance art, the regular new music audience and local authorities of culture politics were all invited to a concert. Among others the concert presented a piece written by the former Croatian president. This document describes the concept and aim of the concert.

  • A Fusion of Sound and Visuals

    The ConTempo String Quartet made a unique visual and musical event combining live and video recorded performance. The four members of the ensemble were placed in separate rooms, each playing the same piece accompanied by the three other ensemble members recorded on video. This gave the audience the chance to see one piece from a variety of angles. This document describes the process and result of the project.

  • Mixing Contemporary Music and Animated Film

    Cantus Ensemble joined forces with young students of animated film to create a unique experience of contemporary music. The students created animated films to be screened during the live performance of the ensemble. The goal was to address a new, young audience by mixing art forms and ditching the formal concert hall. This evaluation report describes the concept and process of the creative collaboration and sums up the response from the audience and what the ensemble learned from the experience.