Milapfest and Liverpool Hope University presented a major outcome of their partnership work last week in an important conference presented by the Electronic Music Studies (EMS) Network at Lisbon, Portugal.

Dr Manuella Blackburn (Lecturer, Hope University) and Alok Nayak (Director of Development, Milapfest) gave  a co-authored conference paper entitled ‘Performer as sound source: Interactions and Mediations in the studio and in the field.’

The paper focused on the issues of sound collection from Indian musical instruments, and how these materials are used creatively in new compositions. The paper presented several research questions: what are the optimum conditions for a successful recording session? How prescriptive one should be as a composer? And how does one navigate the same situation cross-culturally with foreign and ethnic instruments where unfamiliar performance practice traditions and language barriers may exist?

Alok Nayak during the conference presentation, Culturgest, Lisbon

Over the last year, Dr Blackburn has worked in collaboration with the team at Milapfest to record various instruments from Indian classical music. The presentation came at a significant point in the research, which will result in an archive of music instruments, which will be made available later this year for composition projects and education purposes. 

For further information: (links)
EMS13 – Electroacoustic Music in the Context of Interactive Approaches and Networks
Milapfest Website
Dr Manuella Blackburn Research Blog