[colloquia] I. [OPEN CALL] for STRING QUARTETS and INDIVIDUAL STRING PLAYERS

[colloquia] I.

RESIDENCY PROGRAM  for STRING QUARTETS and INDIVIDUAL STRING PLAYERS

[2026/2027]

SOURCE, SUBSTANCE, AND STRUCTURE

Performance as Musical Knowledge: Genealogies and Futures

An international residency investigating the historical lineages, present conditions, and future trajectories of string quartet performance.

FORMAT:

Stage I. | October 2026

- 2 online seminars

- Performers present their artistic practices, performance methodologies, and works in progress

- Q&A

Stage II. | December 2026

- 2 online seminars

- Critical inquiry and practice-led experimentation centered on SOURCE, SUBSTANCE, AND STRUCTURE: Performance as Musical Knowledge

- Q&A

Stage III. | June 2027

- Performances, lecture-performances, interpretative laboratories, and research presentations at the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week in Bled, Slovenia

The [colloquia] residency approaches string quartet performance as a historically situated form of musical knowledge. It brings together an international cohort of established string quartets as well as individual string players who may be formed into quartets within the programme to investigate how embodied techniques, memory, repertoires, instruments, and ensemble relations enter performance and shape emergent musical form.

The program is structured around three interdependent fields of inquiry. SOURCE concerns the conditions, inheritances, and resources from which string quartet performance emerges. SUBSTANCE examines its material, embodied, sonic, and perceptual constitution. STRUCTURE traces the processes through which musical relations acquire coherence, generate form, and transform over time.

Throughout the online sessions, participants develop performances, recordings, artistic research, writing, and experimental formats. Sustained exchange with peers and mentors enables them to articulate their methodologies, critically examine underlying assumptions, and situate their practices in relation to broader historical lineages and future-oriented experimentation.

The residency culminates at the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week in Bled, Slovenia (EU), where participants present their work through performances, lecture-performances, rehearsal laboratories, and research presentations. The program advances string quartet performance as both an artistic practice and a mode of inquiry through experimentation, critical reflection, professional documentation, international exchange, and collaboration.

APPLY by September 15, 2026 

More information: https://colloquia-infra.com/