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<aside> ℹ️ What to expect from this event:
Sergej Tchirkov PhD Candidate, University of Bergen
Keywords: co-creation, non-hierarchical music practice, music performance, collaboration
This session starts at 50:00
In Western classical music, the relationship between performers and their instruments has been characterized by a sense of mastery and control (Nijs, Lesaffre, and Leman 2013). Traditionally, the instrument has been viewed as a tool in the hands of a skilled performer. From this perspective, virtuosity in music has been defined as “extreme skill or mastery, especially technical ability on an instrument” (Chambo 2015, 21).
Within the context of my practice, I approach my instrument from a non-hierarchical perspective which views instrument as a distinct agent in the creative process, and not merely as a tool (Östersjö 2008, 49; Evens 2005, 160). Through my practice, I seek to identify the set of shared co-creative activities that frame the performance in real time - “a shared framework for moment- to- moment experience” (Cook 2018, 21). In this co-creative approach to music, the notion of virtuosity “is not primarily concerned with surface level accuracy or ‘perfection,’ or with reproduction, but rather with live, human performance and creative agency” (Chambo 2015, 24). Therefore, virtuosity becomes a dialectical force that informs my communication with my instrument in real time, triggering new unique relationships between the composer’s experience embodied in the score, my experience of playing with my instrument, my performing narratives, my body, the performance space, the emotional context and the listener (Cf. Couroux 2002; Tchirkov 2021).
To illustrate how virtuosity informs the fragility of the performance, and the way I communicate with the accordion, I will perform the fragments of my recent co-creative collaborations with composers Arnt-Håkon Ånesen and Alfred Zimmerlin which focused on “ the shared creation of new meanings” (Fontaine and Hunter 2006, 25).
References
Sergej Tchirkov is accordionist, curator and researcher based in Bergen, Norway.
Tchirkov has been guest-lecturer at the universities of music in Zürich, Graz, Oslo, Gothenburg, Lucerne, Kuopio, Almaty, and Geneva. In 2013 - 2021 he was deputy artistic director of the Studio for New Music ensemble and university lecturer in contemporary music at Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.
He performs with major European ensembles for contemporary music and has premiered more than 300 works for accordion. His collaborations include composers Thomas Kessler, Elena Rykova, Pierluigi Billone, Hanna Eimermacher, Ivan Fedele, Dieter Schnebel, José María Sánchez Verdú, Gérard Zinsstag a.o.
He currently works as a research fellow in artistic research at the University of Bergen, Department of Fine Arts, Music and Design, the Grieg Academy.
His most recent curatorial and artistic activities focused on anti-war concerts in solidarity with Ukraine.