CoLab 2013: Preparation

In order to allocate us to suitable CoLab projects this year, the team had sent round a list of the proposed projects back in November. We were asked to fill in a survey and indicate our preferences for which project we'd like to be involved in. The one which stood out most for me was "Brighton and Hove Arts Residency", because I enjoy teaching and was keen to develop my skills in this area, but also because I would have the opportunity to work with dancers; something I'd not done before. The prospect of a trip to Brighton was also exciting!

I was thrilled to find out in January that I'd been allocated to this project and looked forward to finding out more about what it involved. Sarah, one of the other musicians in the project, and I arranged a meeting with Tony Thatcher in the week prior to departure to establish more about the project itself, but also the logistics of getting to and from Brighton and accomodation arrangements. From this meeting we realised that this would not be like other projects musicians are used to: Tony was very open to our ideas and suggestions and trusted to us to negotiate the music side of the project. The collaboration element was apparent from the beginning and rather than having a pre-formed idea of what the outcome of the project would be, Tony was happy to see how it took shape as it went along, combining input and ideas from everyone involved. As a classical musician I am used to mostly being told what to do by a conductor who already has a firm idea of what the outcome of a project will be, so this new approach to working together really opened my eyes.
Sarah and I met together the next day to discuss musical ideas and how we would work with the musicians. As we were still unsure about how the project would unfold, it was hard to pinpoint specific ideas, as we didn't know what to expect. To combat this we devised several ideas, using various easily-adaptable techniques such as improvised and aleatoric music.

Our original proposed ideas.

Once we had our ideas written up, we felt that we had done all the preparation we could given the information available to us, so agreed to just wait and see how the project unfolded!