INESC TEC takes concert "a.bel - New Music Interactive" to Boston

The second edition of concert “a.bel – New Music Interactive” took place at the David Friend Hall, one of the auditoriums of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, on March 3. With about 100 people in the audience, “the concert was not exactly a replica of the concert in Porto since there was a new piece made by students from the Berklee Interdisciplinary Arts Institute”, explains Rui Penha, researcher at INESC TEC’s Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia who is leading the project.

The idea of taking the concert to Boston came from Neil Leonard, Professor at Berklee College of Music, who had already been in Portugal to prepare a piece for the concert at the Casa da Música in October 2015. “Together  with Neil Leonard, we wanted to test some solutions we developed since October, and that is what happened”, Rui Penha states.

The strategy designed for the concert was different from what was used at the Casa da Música. According to Rui Penha, we used “mainly the sound from smartphones and acoustic instruments, we divided the audience in two and put them face to face, and we did a little rehearsal  before starting the concert.” The public was an integral part of the concert and the interaction with the musicians was higher. “I saw some people voluntarily swapping their smartphone with people who were close to them only to experience a particular form of interaction. This says a lot about how the a.bel allows this personal device can offer a collective experience”, the researcher states.

The INESC TEC team that was involved in the concert debut at Casa da Música also worked on this event in Boston, directly or indirectly. However, only three members had the opportunity to travel to the United States: Rui Penha, Gilberto Bernardes and Alexandre Clément, also researchers at INESC TEC’s Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia (CTM).

 
The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with UP-FEUP and INESC TEC.