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Colchester Round: four groups of Colchester musicians play each others’ music

Led by Dr Simon Grennan (Research Fellow in Fine Art) during 2011, the international project team included two academic researchers (Grennan and co-author Christopher Sperandio, Associate Professor of Fine Art at Rice University, Houston, Texas) and five public engagement staff from Firstsite, a Colchester fine arts organisation. They undertook a study in Colchester city centre to map social and leisure networks that claim to impact the character of the town. This study interviewed 100 people aged between 14 and 80 via public meetings and individual consultation sessions.

Indications from this study identified a diverse number of historically long-standing music performance networks in the city, including, but in no way restricted to, those supported by the Colchester army garrison, numbering around 7000, in addition to performance cultures in the genres of rock, classical, pop, heavy metal, folk and jazz.

‘Colchester Round’ brought together four groups of Colchester musicians, previously unknown to each other, to record and perform each others’ music in a musical round. The Band of the Parachute Regiment (a military marching band), Cochester Waites (a medieval bassoon ensemble), Sanctorum (a heavy metal band) and Quire (a community choir with a commitment to spirituals) each chose a piece of music that they habitually play, that best represented their ethos and interests, and gave it to the other three groups to record and play in their own style.

The project has created a new paradigm for experiencing and describing music, bringing into question existing modes of both performance and performance evaluation.

Six public performances to a total of 500 people, an audio compact disk and a detailed performance programme were produced, with 7000 copies of the CD and 2000 performance programmes distributed in the city. 190 people participated directly in the recording and performance.