This seminar from February 22nd to 23rd, 2012 looks fascinating. The application deadline has been extended to January 6th.

COMPOSITION – EXPERIMENT -TRADITION
An experimental tradition. A compositional experiment. A traditional composition. An experimental composition. A traditional experiment. A compositional tradition.

KEYNOTE LECTURERS: Chaya Czernowin (Israël) and Richard Barrett (U.K.)

This two-day international seminar aims at exploring the complex role of experimentation in the context of compositional practice and the artistic possibilities that its different approaches yield for practitioners and audiences. How these practices inform, or are informed by, historical, cultural, material and geographical contexts will be a recurring theme of this seminar.

Within such a general context, particular interests or questions include:
• How is composition experimental? For whom? Where? When? Why?
• How are experiments affected by materials, cultures, places, history and practices?
• What characterizes experimentation through collaboration?
• Under what conditions does the use of non-musical elements contribute to experimental compositional practices?
• What are the relationships between experimentation in composition and improvisation?
• What are the relationships between experimentation in composition and performance?
• Is there an Ethics of experimentation; and if so, how does it apply to composition?

The seminar is particularly directed at composers and music practitioners working in areas of research linked to artistic experimentation. Proposals related to any aspect of the seminar topic are welcome. We hope the collective experience will contribute to greater insights into how art unfolds, opening new possibilities for artistic creation and reception.

Who else will be participating? What will the participants come out and say? Will there be significant points of agreement? I’m extremely curious.