The Guildhall masters in leadership is a 2 year course designed to impart a diverse and high quality skill set in the fields of creative collaboration, creative education, flexible performance, communication and project leadership

We were a class of 8 from different musical backgrounds and worked very closely over the 2 years developing ourselves as musicians and musical practitioners. We were encouraged to work on inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural collaborations with artists and practitioners from a range of backgrounds, curate events of new work and deliver educational and social projects across the board of the community.

Below are some music clips from sessions during the course

2 collaboratively composed pieces recorded in the studio

A short piece using hand signs to conduct improvisations from the group. Signs included things like: ‘pre defined unison note’ ‘random note’ ‘long/short note’ ‘stab’ ‘riff’ ‘improvised melody’ ‘solo’ ‘harmonize with another player’ and so on

People choose groups of players by eye contact and hand signs and interrupt eachother with improvised playing

The product of a day working with on and off beats as a means to find new techniques to compose-the chords were made using the process

Developed collaboratively, this groove in 9 came from a base rhythm presented by one of the tutors

Results of a couple of 45 minute compositional workshops in which Mehdi Ganjvar presented small rhythmic ideas which were developed in groups

Liv Bradbury conducts random note vocal chords with a group of communication art students from the Royal College of Art

A starting point from Gail Macleod and developed in 45 minutes

Ole Farstad presented an Indian raga which was developed in 45 minutes

Playing the West African Gyl with Mehdi Ganjvar on percussion

A day spent exploring the use of all 12 tones in a riff and putting several of these riffs together

The development of a City Viking piece while at the YST conservatory in Singapore

An idea by Ole Farstad to use Fibonaci’s mathematical pattern to compose collaboratively

A tune developed by the girls during a residency in the Barbican’s pit theatre from ideas forged in a previous session

Leading improvised chords

Using a book of nonsense, in 3 groups we chose long phrases and formed them into musical ideas. These 3 parts were then fused together by finding the common denominator beatwise