Page to Stage

Funding has been announced for a new project that will bring storytelling, design and technology together to break down the fourth wall of classical music.

The Page to Stage project will see Kenneth Hamilton (School of Music, Cardiff University), Amanda Bayley (Bath Spa University) and producer Sheila Hayman develop an app that will add layers of content and texture to classical music performance.

This collaboration is one of six to be awarded £50,000 each as part of REACT Future Documentary Sandbox, a nationwide programme to explore the theme of Future Documentary.

The app will enable audiences to explore the invisible history, context and meaning of a piece of music, as played by the world-leading Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Following the musicians from first rehearsal to finished performance, the app will blend video with timed metadata tags, aiming to engage more people with classical music without distracting from the beauty of the performance itself.

Pianist and scholar Professor Kenneth Hamilton will be contributing his international performance experience, his knowledge of performance-practice issues, and experience in communicating with audiences. He said: "I'm convinced that this excitingly novel project will increase the understanding of classical music, and help to attract not just a wider, but a broader audience to both rare and familiar masterpieces."

The Future Documentary projects all explore new ways of interacting with documentary media, taking advantage of the creative possibilities opened up by interactive platforms and new technologies. More information about the projects can be found at http://www.react-hub.org.uk/

REACT is a collaboration between the UWE Bristol, Watershed (and iShed), and the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter. It is one of four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to develop strategic partnerships with creative businesses and cultural organisations, to strengthen and diversify their collaborative research activities and increase the number of arts and humanities researchers actively engaged in research-based knowledge exchange.