The Performer as Protagonist: Taking Stock of Performer Initiatives and Agency
Transplanted Roots: Percussion Research Symposium is designed to convene researchers and professionals working in the ever-changing field of contemporary percussion. The overall goal is to integrate and present written, oral, and performance research in percussion and construct a global picture of this quickly evolving discipline, with a fresh and critical view that escapes the dominance of the European-North American tradition. The format consists of paper presentations, lecture-recitals, and concert performances.
Submission Deadline: March 15, 2025
Notification of successful applicants: April 7, 2025
Accept or decline offer by April 30, 2025
Festival Dates: September 10-13, 2025
Location: ESMAE (Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espectáculo), Porto, Portugal
Keynote Speakers
Jennifer Torrence
Jennifer Torrence is a percussionist/performer based in Oslo, Norway. Much of her work is built upon extended collaborative processes with composers/musicians and with artists from diverse practices, resulting in a large body of work that positions itself in an "expanded field" of music. Performance highlights in 2025 include appearing as a concerto soloist with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, as a soloist at festivals such as Tectonics and Darmstadt, and premiering major new works by Clara Iannotta, Weston Olencki, and Kari Watson.
Jennifer is also a member of the Norwegian ensemble, Pinquins, whose recent projects include large-scale productions made in collaboration with composers/musicians, choreographers, and scenographers, and presented at festivals such as Donaueschingen, Ultima, Spor, and MINU, among others.
Her artistic research has focused on the intersection of percussion/performance and topics such as the body, collaborative processes, precariousness, collectivity, and queerness. Her writings can be found in the VIS Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, Routledge, and elsewhere.
Jennifer is Associate Professor II of Percussion at the Norwegian Academy of Music. She also tutors percussion at the Darmstadt Summer Course. For more information see www.jennifertorrence.com.
Aiyun Huang
Aiyun Huang enjoys a musical life as a soloist, chamber musician, researcher, teacher and producer. Globally recognized since winning the 2002 First Prize and Audience Prize of the Geneva International Music Competition. She is a champion of existing repertoire and a prominent voice in the collaborative creation of new works. Huang has premiered over two hundred works in her three decades as a performer and producer.
The Globe and Mail critic Robert Everett-Green describes Huang’s playing as “engrossing to hear and to watch” and her choice of repertoire as capable of “renovating our habits of listening.” Her past highlights include performances with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Taipei Symphony Orchestra and San Diego Symphony Orchestra. She has appeared in international festivals and venues including the Victoria Hall in Geneva, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra’s Green Umbrella Series, LACMA Concert Series, Holland Festival, Agora Festival in Paris, Banff Arts Festival, 7éme Biennale d’Art Contemporaine de Lyon, Vancouver New Music Festival, CBC Radio, La Jolla Summerfest, Scotia Festival, Montreal New Music Festival, Cervantino Festival in Mexico, and the National Concert Hall and Theater in Taipei. Her recent premieres include works by Shih-Hui Chen, Kuei-Ju Lin, Mari Kimura, Carlos Sanchez Guttierrez, Pall Ragnar Palsson, Jesse Jones, Zosha DiCastri, Philippe Leroux, David Bithell, Nicole Lizée, George Lewis, Chris Mercer, Kotoka Suzuki, Sandeep Bhagwati, and Eliot Britton.
Beyond her acclaimed body of creative work, Huang’s research focuses on the multidisciplinary exploration into the performing body in media technology, theatre, dance and music using percussion as the central voice. She has published in the Cambridge Companion to Percussion, Contemporary Music Review, Frontiers in Psychology, Journal of Motor Behavior, International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expressions, Percussive Notes, Intersections, and CIRCUIT. She has released two DVDs Saving Percussion Theatre and Memory in Motion: Percussion in Surround and one documentary Drumming in Magic Time featuring the performance practice of Steve Reich’s Drumming. She directs Technology and Performance Integration Research (TaPIR) Lab at the University of Toronto.
Besides her performance career and creative outputs, Aiyun pursues a wide array of activities to integrate performance and research, and to support emerging artists and peers internationally. In 2015, Aiyun led the inaugural edition of Transplanted Roots: Percussion Research Symposium gathering international performers and scholars from four continents to discuss and reflect on the current state of contemporary percussion. Transplanted Roots takes place on a different continent every other year with 2017 in Brisbane (Australia), 2019 in Guanajuato (Mexico) and 2022 in San Diego (USA). In 2019, Aiyun served as the Grand Jury for the Geneva International Music Competition. In 2018, Aiyun was the keynote speaker to Multidisciplinary Conference at the University of Toronto. In 2017, she hosted PASIC Focus Day and was the conference director for Illuminations: Brian Cherney at 75 at McGill University, Montreal. In 2016, Aiyun was the keynote speaker for Australian Percussion Gathering where she met over 400 percussionists from across Australia.
Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Aiyun holds a DMA degree from UC San Diego. Between 2006 and 2017, she led the percussion program at McGill University and held the position of William Dawson Scholar. She currently holds the position of Professor of Music at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto where she heads the percussion area and directs the University of Toronto Percussion Ensemble. She also serves as the Artistic Director for soundSCAPE Festival in Blonay, Switzerland. Aiyun is a proud endorser of Kolberg Percussion.
Håkon Stene
Håkon Stene is active Internationally as a soloist and chamber musician across multiple genres, initiator and commissioner of new works, recording artist, producer, educator, and researcher. His solo and chamber recordings have been awarded the Norwegian Grammy (Spellemann) in the category of contemporary music and “open genre” five times.
He studied in Oslo, Freiburg, and San Diego. From 2005–2008 he was selected for the launch programme “INTRO” for young soloists by Concerts Norway. As a soloist he performed with Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, Oslo Sinfonietta, 2e2m, Avanti!, Nadar and several others. Furthermore he plays with ensembles such as asamisimasa (contemporary), Pantha Du Prince (techno), and Nils Økland and Benedicte Maurseth (Folk Impro), including venues and festivals throughout Europe, the U.S., Asia and Australia.
Håkon Stene collaborates with numerous composers across generations and styles. A special interest of his has been the expanded role of the instrumentalist in experimental music. This topic was explored in the research projects “’This is Not a Drum’ – Towards a Post-Instrumental Practice” and the post-doctoral project “Music with the Real” undertaken at the Norwegian Academy of Music from 2010 to 2017. He is a professor of percussion studies at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, and has been co-teaching at IMD's percussion studio since 2016.
Location
The School of Music and Performing Arts (ESMAE) is a national and international reference for higher education in arts. Located in the centre of Porto, ESMAE has an international standing, and offers customised and cutting-edge higher education programmes in music and drama.
Built in 1985, on the foundations of the former School of Music, this is one of the founding schools of the Porto Polytechnic. Today it features two departments music and theatre and a postgraduate programme in Dance was created in 2016.
ESMAE is home to the Helena Sá e Costa Theatre and to the Café-Concert Francisco Beja, and apart from being a space for creating and experimenting, it is the venue of over 500 art events annually. The ESMAE Symphony Orchestra, the ESMAE Baroque Orchestra and the ESMAE Jazz Orchestra, among many others, are often the performers in many of those events.
Recommended Lodging
Contact
Please direct all questions and submissions to the organizing team:
trpercussionsymposium@gmail.com