BIOGRAPHY
Fabrice Marandola is an Associate Professor of Percussion and Contemporary Music at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University (Montreal). Previously, he was a professor of percussion at the conservatories of Angers and Grenoble in France, a pedagogy instructor at the Conservatory of Paris, and an invited professor at the Crane School of Music (SUNY-Potsdam, NY). A founding member of Canadian percussion ensemble Sixtrum, he has an active career on the New Music scene, commissioning, performing and recording new works for solo and chamber ensembles.
Marandola holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Paris IV-Sorbonne and has conducted in-depth field-research in Cameroon. He is a member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology of Montreal (CIRMMT) of which he was Associate Director/Artistic Research from 2009-2014. In 2015-16, Marandola was Senior Research Chair at Sorbonne-Universités to lead a multidisciplinary research project on Musical Gesture (Geste-Acoustique-Musique).
ABSTRACT
At the age of 5 years old, my father’s drum set and the gift of a small African drum turned to be key elements that would determine a life made of endless boundary crossings: between classical percussion and ethnomusicology; between performances with Digital Music Interfaces on new music scenes and the application of experimental methods in Pygmies camps; between collaborations with composers and fellow musicians and research projects with fellow researchers.
Taking examples from various experiences in new music, ethnomusicology and research on the relationship between gesture and music performance, I will discuss how interdisciplinarity has become a key component of many research or research-creation projects, and what challenges and benefits can one expect from such collaborative works.