News and Projects

Where can Closet Music go from here?

Closet Music for Children

At the start of the first lockdown in 2020, Janet was delighted and grateful to receive a grant from Sound and Music as part of their ‘Interpreting Isolation’ project, supporting new music during lockdown. She is using the grant to further the Closet Music project, this time for children, encouraging them to explore their auditory imagination.

She commissioned three composers to contribute new works for the project:

• Sheena Phillips, who produced a project suitable for the classroom or home use about interpreting symbols and colours – a little like in introduction to personal graphic scores
• Paul Burnell, who created a comic-book style activity framing our auditory imagination as a superpower
• Sam Auinger, who is developing ideas about careful, attentive listening in the real world.

These commissions, and other works produced by Janet, were used in a couple of very successful online workshops with children aged 7 to 10.

Janet also produced a series of short, gentle videos for children aged 7 – 11, exploring the auditory imagination. The videos can be used as holiday activities, as part of home schooling, or in the classroom. They are free to access here. In the near future, classroom visits and workshops will continue the project, with a volume of works for children as the lasting result.

Supported by:

CoMA Summer School workshop

In the summer of 2020, Contemporary Music for All (CoMA) – which can be found at www.coma.org - ran an online summer school, packed with interactive courses and sessions exploring all aspects of contemporary music. Janet led an introductory course to Closet Music, looking at works already written, the ideas behind the concept, and then encouraging participants to create their own works. Feedback was very positive, and several fascinating approaches were developed. Five complete works were produced, including a new one by Janet, and can be seen here:

• Ana: Acting Out
• Clare: Listen
• Hector: The same effect
• Kaelin: Make a choice
• Janet: Ode to joy

Electronic Closet Music

From the beginning, it has been clear that Closet Music would work well in an electronic format. The potential for interaction, 'digging down' and control over time that would be possible in an app will suit this kind of work very well. It would also allow colour which could not be incorporated (for economical reasons) in the original Closet Music Book.

Closet Music on the Underground

Wouldn't it be great to get miniature Closet Music works on the Tube! The concept is ideal...