Oxford Schools Intercultural Music Exchange
Journey: Bridging Cultures Through Music
Primary Investigator
Dr Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey
Faculty of Music, University of Oxford
Partner Organisations:
Faculty of Music, University of Oxford
Researchers
Dr Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Music
Dr Toby Young, Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Music
Professor Samantha Dieckmann, Faculty of Music
About the project:
This musical initiative brought together twelve Year 12 students with twelve young asylum seekers and other newly arrived international students who were part of the STEP (Steps Toward English Proficiency) programme at Oxford Spires Academy. Together, with the support of composer Toby Young, conductor Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey and students from the Music Faculty’s Music in the Community Course, they were tasked with exploring each other’s musical heritages, sharing the journeys that had brought them together, and discussing how music formed part of their individual and collective identities.
Working with musicians from the Orchestra of St John’s and workshop leaders, the students designed a new composition for orchestra that interwove the musical histories and identities of the group and amplified the voices of these creative young people within the Oxford community. Performances of the new work were given by the Orchestra of St John’s at Dorchester Abbey and the North Wall Arts Centre in Oxford, as well as at Oxford Spires Academy. A research strand exploring the experiences and impact of intercultural musical initiatives was embedded in the project and was conducted by postgraduate students supervised by Professor Samantha Dieckmann.
Journey: Bridging Cultures Through Music
A collaboration between the Orchestra of St John’s, Oxford Spires Academy, TORCH and the Department of Music at the University of Oxford, the project brought together young asylum seekers and Year 12 students for a cooperative music composition project.
The project continued in Autumn 2020, and details of a 2021 performance were to be announced as soon as possible.
Project Directors
- Dr Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, Postdoctoral Researcher and Associate Conductor of the Orchestra of St John’s
- Dr Toby Young, Postdoctoral Researcher and Composer in Residence with the Orchestra of St John’s
https://www.youtube.com/embed/URfTh4m2Dvk
Displaced Voices at King's Place January 2019
One of the things we all loved so much about music was its ability to support or change our mood and how we felt—helping us to relax, focus or become energised to perform a task. Sometimes music virtually transported us to another place and time—a far-away memory, perhaps, or a new horizon that we had not expected. Music took us on journeys into and back out of ourselves and to places we had never seen before, connecting us with people we had never met. Music also told stories, tales of who we were, where we came from, and how we related to each other.
Listening to music afforded all of these experiences and so many more, but making music provided a whole new spectrum of possibilities. Whether making music on our own or with others, we came into social relation with instruments and people—we interacted. Even singing on our own involved interacting with the physicality of our voice, which responded in more or less expected ways. Through these interactions, interpersonal connections were fostered, giving rise to new ideas and new ways of understanding ourselves and others.
Journey capitalised on all of these affordances of music in order to break down cultural barriers between young asylum seekers and migrants who were part of Oxford Spires Academy’s STEP programme (Steps Toward English Proficiency) and other students their age in Year 12. An outgrowth of Displaced Voices (see video below), a project that amplified the voices of young refugees through the combination of orchestral music and poetry, Journey scaffolded the composition process to engage participants in the creative act of writing an electro-acoustic orchestral piece of music. Through a series of workshops, participants explored and brought together their musical heritages to construct a musical narrative that shared the multiplicity of experiences—the journeys—of the individuals in the group with the wider community.
While research had revealed a great deal about what music could afford, there was less that was known about the impacts of such socio-musical initiatives on the participants themselves. An important part of the project was a collaboration with Professor Samantha Dieckmann and two postgraduate students, Rose Campion and Samuel Fouts, who conducted a study on the experiences of young people taking part. Additionally, the project provided a placement opportunity for music students taking the Music in the Community module, and we were pleased to work with three excellent undergraduates: Hannah Soares (Oriel), Ellen O’Brien (St Hilda’s) and Tristan Weymes (Trinity).
The public performance at the North Wall Arts Centre, originally scheduled for early July, was subsequently listed as TBD.
Biographies
Dr Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, Director of Performance at St Catherine’s College and Associate Conductor of the Orchestra of St John’s. She held postgraduate degrees in orchestral conducting, percussion and musicology; her research focused on the social psychology and socio-political aspects of orchestral performance. Her publications included The Body Orchestral (2018), a book chapter exploring the cognitive mechanisms underpinning co-performer communication, Digital Methods in the Study of the Nineteenth-Century Orchestra (2020) in Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and Agency, Creativity and (Inter)action in Orchestra Performance for Making Music Together: Analytical Perspectives on Musical Interaction.
Dr Toby Young is a composer and researcher whose work explored the boundaries between pop and classical music. After winning the Guardian/BBC Proms Young Composer of the Year award (2006) and the International ABRSM Composition Competition (2009), Toby’s music was performed by renowned ensembles including the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Academy of Ancient Music, London Mozart Players, and the choirs of King’s College Cambridge, New College Oxford, and Westminster Abbey. He also wrote and co-wrote music for numerous pop artists, including the Rolling Stones, Chase & Status, Duran Duran and Ellie Goulding. At the time, Toby was a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
