PERFORMING SPACE

The interdisciplinary project Performing Space investigated how different spaces influence musicians’ daily practice. The results of this project provided insights how the practice and rehearsing activities can be improved.

The study results show that most important reasons for preferred room choice are acoustics and atmosphere where atmosphere was defined as including room size, windows, lighting, air conditioning, interior design. Privacy, reachability, and room availability were less important.

Performing Space 3Performing Space 1Performing Space 2

In-depth interviews with last-year performance master students preparing for their final concert at the Lucerne Culture and Congress Center uncovered challenges with which students have to deal while preparing for a concert in a big venue: adapting to different acoustics, social pressure of the event importance, and switching from introvert to extrovert kind of playing, i.e. playing for the audience.

For designing practice rooms, following recommendations emerged from the interviews:

  1. Providing spaces that resemble the concert venues in following aspects: impression of bigness (real or illusional): important acoustically and psychologically, acoustics, stage, backstage, simulation of infrastructure and devices;
  2. Providing different types of practice venues, i.e. adjustable venues in order to train flexibility in acoustics and in atmosphere;
  3. For daily practice: visual warmth, air quality, recreational space, mirrors, stage/pedestal, simple recording device.

 

Publications:

Alessandri, Elena; Schuchert, Christian Lars & Lasauskaite Schüpbach, Ruta (2015). From the practice room to the concert venue: A preliminary study. Dissonance, (131), 28-32. online

Reisinger, Markus; Schuchert, Christian Lars; Alessandri, Elena & Fischer, Danielle  (2014). Räume für Musik: Üben, vorbereiten, aufführen. Tec21, 37, 15-15.

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