Deep dive with us into the resonances that flowed from the 2023 Performers(') Present symposium!

Video by Dancing Legs Productions.

Learn more about Performers(') Present: https://www.ystmusic.nus.edu.sg/resea...

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Human experience is filled with flowing resonances: from distant stars, to temple bells, from concert stages, to the creative depths translated into a musical phrase – being a performer present is embodying flowing resonances.

As the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music celebrates its 20th year, we reflect upon musical resonances flowing in and out of Southeast Asia and particularly – since hosting its inaugural artistic research symposium in 2009 – towards the global synergistic growth in the field of artistic research.

As with our four previous artistic-research symposia, Flowing Resonances seeks to address the kaleidoscopic issues facing musicians as they develop their musical art; creative practices rippling within the repercussions of global socio-political shifts – including the 2020 pandemic, the climate crisis, and the ever-evolving digital landscape – all challenging and inspiring what it means to be a twenty-first century musical artist.

The previous Performers(‘) Present: Telling Stories symposium took place in October 2019, just on the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even with the numerous seismic global developments afoot in the late 2010’s, it would have been impossible to predict the calamities that were about to unfold. And yet, despite the world coming to a crashing halt in 2020, humankind persevered. Medical and technological innovation flourished. Solutions to seemingly insurmountable challenges were discovered. Notwithstanding the overwhelming tragedies of death and loss, the globe kept rotating on its axis. Musicians kept making music, even discovering some new streams of artistic expression. And humanity flowed like a river.

The new millennium has witnessed much global evolution in artistic research and creative practices in music. This same quarter century has coincided with a meteoric growth of European classical music throughout Asia. Southeast Asia, in particular, has fostered numerous institutions for the performance, study, and preservation of the European classical tradition, whilst also inspiring new resonances through its own traditional musical practices. Born in East Asia, the gong – through its all-encompassing soundscape iconographically associated with cosmic vibration – is a beautiful representation of universal resonance born out of cacophony. Though the pandemic reminded us of the reflective power of quietude, the gift of being present for reverberant, flowing resonances has rarely been more welcomed.


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