Nourishing Diversity: Representation and Inclusion

How can we create a new music context that is inclusive and representative? How do we nourish situations that stimulate diversity in artistic participation? Anne La Berge will discuss Nieuw Geneco’s Tree of Musical Influences project. Alison Isadora will present some research findings concerning issues of diversity in the contemporary Western art music community. Topics that will be covered include class, race, gender, economics and education. The audience is kindly invited to contribute to the discussion!

(presented by Nieuw Geneco)

Anne La Berge
Anne La Berge’s passion for the extremes in both composed and improvised music has led her to storytelling and sound art as her sources of musical inspiration. Her music gathers the elements on which her reputation is based: ferocious and far-reaching virtuosity, microtonal textures and melodies, and her unique array of percussive flute techniques, all combined with interactive electronic processing and text. She works regularly as an improvisation and live electronics coach worldwide in the context of residencies and coaching and teaches at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
She performs regularly as a soloist and with the ensemble MAZE and is an member of Splendor Amsterdam, a collective of musicians who have transformed an old bathhouse into a cultural mecca.
The more than 50 releases where she is either a performer or a composer and her published and unpublished compositions can be found on her website, www.annelaberge.com.

Alison Isadora
One of Alison’s early recollections of contextual music-making occurred when, as a 9-year old, she was asked to play violin for the gang members who lifted weights in the family garage. Numerous incidences involving symphony orchestras, punk bands, gamelan groups, free-improv ensembles and new music outfits have stimulated an appreciation of the myriad creative intra-actions possible between the composer, score, performer, audience and place.
Isadora was born and bred in Aotearoa/New Zealand and has been based in Amsterdam since the late 80s. She has recently completed a PhD at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, entitled Performing the Ecology of a Composition-Practice-in-Becoming.