I have been talking about making an ‘open score’ without really going into detail… well, this is something I’ve been interested in for a long time – especially informed by my work with CoMa when I was a student, and afterwards as the South West regional Coordinator.  The idea is to make a musical score that has some ‘guidelines’ but it is not totally fixed – the performers are left to make some decisions. It is part way between scored music and free improvisation – and can be anywhere along the scale between the two.

For instance – abstract graphic scores by composers such as Earle Brown or Christian Wolff affords the performer quite a lot of freedom in their interpretation, - and could be seen as a stimulus for improvisation. A more ‘defined’ example of an open score could be Terry Riley’s In C, which you can read more about here or download the score here - and the image inserted in this post is an extract from it. This has defined and scored musical material – but the performers have the freedom to collectively shape and balance the piece how they choose. performances of an open score are different each time – depending on the choices of the players. I aim to create various ‘open scores’ as starting points to shape the performance of Vocal Migrations.