Inclusive Creativity is a new partnership project between Walled City Music, University of Ulster McGee, St Magnus International Festival and Drake Music, supported by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
In July 2015, Professor Frank Lyons of Ulster University and Walled City Music brought together together performers, composers and inventors combining acoustic and electronic instruments. These include newly designed and built creations such as Wavemotion, as well as off the shelf hardware and software Ableton Live and Push.
After the first meeting, Frank wrote on the project blog:
Jay [Hagon, musician], James [Pike, musician and technologist], Niamh [Kehoe, composer and Master’s Student] and myself now joined by musicians from Something Special– Sarah, John, Sean, Conor, Robert with new undergraduate students Connie and Natasha and PhD students Thelma and Denise. We created some really exciting improvisations – I was struck by the willingness to experiment and openness to unfamiliar musical approaches. We came up with a name for the group: Acoustronic, reflecting the combination of acoustic and electronic instruments.
Since then, the group have met weekly – eleven more times – and plan to continue working together. In September, Jay, James and Frank travelled to Orkney to take part in an intensive weekend workshop hosted by St Magnus International Festival (see here and here), where they met three composers from the Royal Conservatoire Scotland, who are keen to continue working with them and with Acoustronic. Acoustronic also plan to carry on meeting and rehearsing, working towards a potential public performance with Walled City Music in 2016.
