Sean Bell will present the results of his artistic residency at Studio LOOS. After a week of experimenting with redefining his approach to his own creative practice and early music, the results will be shared and performed. 

The event will have two parts. The first will be an open presentation of the work developed and created during the week in the studio. The second will be a work-in-progress presentation of the piece Songbook: Shakespearian Tales of Woe by composer Robert Nettleship for countertenor and drum kit.

The two parts are parallel processes that explore a similar relationship to early music as a style and concept.

• Sean Bell - countertenor

• Robert Nettleship - drum kit

Ticket price: 5 euros

about the artistic research:

So far, in my artistic research, I have worked on using early music songs/repertoire. With the arrangement as my creative tool, I found freedom working within these parameters and built a concept-driven project from preexisting material. Now, I want to explore how I can break out of this framework and create a new starting point for myself. Moving beyond arranging in my practice, how can I bridge the roles of composer, performance artist, and early music singer by focusing on concept rather than form?

As a starting point, I will explore concepts from different styles of early music repertoire. This will be my approach to historically inspired performance. First, an idea or concept derived from the music or the context in which the music was created historically. I will try to work with the fundaments of the music without the notes: text, mood, instrumentation, tonality and timbre. I will experiment with different compositional tools like graphic scores, free improv, electronics, and live recording to have a fresh approach.

The idea for this research came from people’s reactions to my previous work. They would ask if I considered myself as a composer-performer or just a performer? I would answer that I was a singer (like my education states), realizing that composer-performer was maybe an unexplored identity within my artistic work.