We are pleased to invite you to a new series of METRIC Online Sessions.
In 2026, we will host a series of interactive online events designed as a shared space for inspiration, exchange, and critical reflection on the evolving role of improvisation in higher music education and contemporary artistic practice.
Building on the spirit of dialogue and experimentation that defines METRIC, these sessions bring together artists, educators, researchers, and students to explore how improvisation shapes the way we create, teach, learn, and collaborate today.
“Seeded Improvisation: interweaving intricate notation with spontaneous creation”
January – Thursday 29 January 2026 17:00-18:00 CET
With presenter: Richard Barrett, Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatoire, The Hague, Netherlands
“Seeded improvisation” is a concept I’ve been developing in my compositional and performance work for around 25 years. It’s a particular approach to combining precisely notated composition with free improvisation. I’m constantly looking for the most appropriate and immediate way to realise the structural/expressive (and structurally expressive) sound-forms I imagine, and, as the imaginative scope of these sound-forms has expanded, so necessarily has the range of methods I’ve evolved to realise them. “Imagining a sound-form” could include imagining a situation which facilitates unpredictability in a particular way, not treating improvisation or notation in terms of distinct types of music, but as different compositional strategies.
While the precise specification and synchronisation of sounds and structures is clearly “idiomatic” to notated (or fixed-media) composition, improvisation makes possible sounds and structures impossible to imagine emanating from the imagination of a single individual, being the result of a “collective intelligence” which might coalesce into a complex unity, or explode chaotically into its constituent parts, or both, at any moment. In “seeded improvisation”, highly precise notated materials form points of expressive and structural focus which inform and influence the improvisatory activity that might surround and connect them, without the score prescribing them in any way. The presentation will explore the nature and potential of this concept with particular attention to the 70-minute electroacoustic sextet close- up. The score can be downloaded here. A CD recording will be released later in 2025.
Richard Barrett’s work encompasses a range from free improvisation to intricately- notated scores, and from acoustic chamber music to innovative uses of digital technology. He is involved in several long-term creative collaborations: with the ELISION ensemble since 1990, with Paul Obermayer in the electronic duo FURT since 1986, with the Evan Parker Electroacoustic Ensemble since 2003 and with Milana Zarić and Ensemble Studio 6 since 2013. He was born in Swansea in 1959 and his principal composition teacher was Peter Wiegold. He now teaches at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague and is Professor of Creative Music Research at Leiden University. His work as composer and performer is documented on over forty CDs. In October 2020 he and Milana Zarić set up the digital label STRANGE STRINGS. His books Music of Possibility (2019) and Transforming Moments (2023) are published by Vision Edition.
“No risk, no reward – a demonstration of ensemble improvisation informed by the western classical tradition”
February, Monday 23 February 2026 15:30-16:30 CET
With presenters: William Bracken, Adaya Peled-Malka and Catharina Feyen.
This presentation explores the untapped creative and connective potential of improvisation in an ensemble context. The presentation will open with a mini-lecture on the context of the historical role of improvisation in western classical music. This will include how improvisation was intimately connected to the live performance experience, the compositional process and the expectations of audiences in the 18th and 19th centuries. In stark contrast to this, the same cannot be said of the current western classical music landscape, despite some signs of re-awakening in recent years such as the work done by pioneering organisations such as METRIC and groups such as Ensemble+. We will also explore the (scientifically proven) benefits of improvisation for all parties involved, including enhanced enjoyment, management of performance anxiety and deeper audience engagement.
The talk will be followed by a live demonstration of group improvisation by Ensemble+, taking stimuli directly from the audience via the livestream chat to create several improvised works. The stimuli will include spoken text, musical themes and moods and characters. We would also like to invite the opportunity to explore the possibility the of the ensemble responding to contributions from the livestream chat during an improvised work as it unfolds in real time.
https://www.ensembleplus.co.uk
Ensemble+ is a group committed to challenging preconceptions about performance through a vivid storytelling and risk-taking approach to music making. They have given performances at London’s King’s Place and Milton Court Concert Hall at the 2025 Performance Studies Network Conference, and in 2024 were top prize winners at the René Aarons International Improvisation Competition.
Taking inspiration from the rich history of Western classical music improvisation, they are committed to re-enlivening classical performance, dissolving the boundaries between performers and listeners, and creating a deep, meaningful connection with their audience through spontaneous creation, musical telepathy, and active audience collaboration.
Alongside the classical canonic repertoire and collaborations with composers and multicultural musicians and creators, at the heart of their creation is the interactive concert experience: audience members may offer a word, object, musical theme, or story fragment-prompts that spark the creation of entirely improvised musical works. No two performances are ever the same, and every concert becomes a shared, unrepeatable experience.
