Article: Breaking Boundaries of Role and Hierarchy in Collaborative Music-Making
Published in March 2017 in a Contemporary Music Review special issue “Collaboration in Contemporary Music”
Abstract: This paper explores the collaborative relationship between Jess Aslan and Emma Lloyd in the context of two projects: a set of three pieces for violin and computer and an electro-instrumental duo album under the band name KUBOV. Beginning with discrete roles as composer and performer, our working relationship progressed naturally into one of equal authorship, and equal performative contribution. In exploring this creative relationship, we will examine the effects of working primarily with sound, over notation.
We look at how building and extending our instruments affected the hybridity of our sound and contributed to the development of our musical language. We will analyse the importance of improvisation to our development as a duo, in the generation of ideas and the discovery of new sounds and potential in our instruments. This allowed us to retain a certain freedom when we returned to a loosely composed format to record our album.
Over the course of this paper, we will examine the terms of our collaboration, with reference to other relevant work. We contextualise this collaboration with theoretical analysis and we reflect on the practicalities of our joint musical development and the growth of our musical partnership. The initial classically informed hierarchy of the composer/performer duo dissolved as we each took on a balanced creative and performative role.