Sunday, June 24, 2007

Multi-Sensory Choral Music: Festival 500 Symposium

On June 30, 2007 an audience of choral conductors, singers, scholars and patrons convened at the Festival 500 Choral Symposium held at Memorial University, St. John's, NL, CA for a presentation titled "Multi-Sensory Choral Music" given by Mark Doerries. The paper discussed the use of visual elements, particularly colored light, in the compositions of Schoenberg, Scriabin, Thomas Wilfred and Wassily Kandinsky as a means to rediscover the cultural relevancy of classical choral music. A multi-sensory choral production in the 2006 Philadelphia Fringe Festival titled Luminescence: Experiments in Visual Acoustics was examined as a model for holistic and interdisciplinary approaches to performing classical music. Musicians voiced their opinions regarding extra-musical elements in the classical music concert environment in the discussion that followed.

If you were present at the Festival 500 Choral Symposium please share your thoughts here!