New Music Incubator course leader Jan Hendrickse shares his thoughts on the first residency in Sweden, April 2010…

“New Music Incubator has become both a professional development project and an ongoing practice-based research project. The idea was to experiment with working in a relatively secluded environment for five days working with a very open brief and no expectation of any kind of public performance. The experience took everyone by surprise and I think it would be safe to say that nobody had any idea how intensely challenging and creatively stimulating it would prove to be.

The research element of this work stems from the interdisciplinary nature of the working environment, and the dimension of collaborative investigation and discovery.

The surroundings of the island of Saltogarden were idyllic, allowing no distraction from the work, being surrounded entirely by forest and coastline. This environment enabled everyone to leave their regular professional concerns behind and to concentrate entirely on being with each other and producing new work. The intensity of this experience seemed to be generated both by the commitment of the artists to the process, but also by the necessity to collaborate and for everyone to work outside their comfort zones. It is probably true to say that by day three everyone involved had felt challenged by the process in some way.

The habitual working processes of composers, improvisers, sound artists, choreographers and performers of new repertoire are clearly very different. The time-scale of the creative process, the materials, aesthetics and working environments are often very diverse. The NMI environment seemed to put everyone in an almost equally uncomfortable situation forcing composers and improvisers to negotiate about musical structure and to consider how to integrate their work with a choreographer. Starting points for creative work were extremely varied and included the ideas of convergence and divergence, using physical space as musical material, the effects of sound on physiology, and a map of the island with a grid reference marked. The results were similarly unpredictable, with extraordinary pieces involving almost no sound, pianos prepared with feathers and research processes involving one group taking a vow of silence for the entire day.

A project like this is not measured so much in terms of outcomes, but in terms of resonance. Twenty two people left the island altered in some way, and probably having made some new priorities about how to approach their work. Even if this was only a desire to collaborate with some new friends and colleagues.”

Jan Hendrickse, April 2010