Atlas Academy
Fourth edition: 20 August – 2 September 2012 
Conservatorium van Amsterdam

The Atlas Academy is an international meeting place for composers and musicians from all over the world. Devoted to the development of new intercultural music the Atlas Academy offers a wide range of presentations, demonstrations, lectures, composers practical workshops on non-western instruments and seminars about eastern musical cultures and composing for intercultural instrumental combinations.

The teaching staff consists of the internationally acclaimed musicians of the Atlas Ensemble and a select company of renowned guest professors. The Atlas Academy is hosted by and located in the new building of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.

Objectives
The Atlas Academy promotes, stimulates and strives for the development of:

a. new intercultural repertoire
b. instrumental skills and ensemble playing
c. knowledge of various musical cultures
d. documentation and digital library

a. For the future of new intercultural music the creation of new repertoire of high quality is essential. To encourage this, composers will be invited to participate in the Atlas Academy in the coming years. A first requirement for true understanding of other musical cultures and their performers and instruments is to acquire hands-on live experience. At the Atlas Academy composers are given the opportunity to work with the musicians directly to learn, collaborate, discover and test sketches and possibilities.

b and c. The traditions, instruments and musical practises of Eastern and Western musicians vary widely and are an inexhaustible source of study, inspiration and innovation via reciprocal learning. Knowledge of other musical cultures can be enriching and may lead to new views. In individual as well as group lessons a wide range of Middle Eastern and Asian instruments will be studied.
General and theoretical perspectives will be treated in lectures.

d. documentation and digital library
Comprehensive information on non-western instruments in the English language (such as orchestration books) hardly exists. The Atlas Academy wishes to provide composers with the basic tools by structurally collecting written and audiovisual information and building a digital library available and easily accessible via internet and dvd. See for the early stages of this project www.atlasensemble.nl

The Atlas Academy is open to professional composers and musicians, instrumental and composition students, musicologists, scholars and all others interested.

Mission Statement
The chief objectives of the Atlas Ensemble are the promotion of exchange and cross-pollination of traditions and achievements of the art music of different cultures, and the development of new repertoire.

Just as our society has been irrevocably transformed into a multicultural community, the music world is also in constant flux, thanks to initiatives such as the Atlas Ensemble. The musical landscape of the future will be determined by ensemble formations that unite disparate musical cultures, stylistically (in terms of idiom) as well as in terms of instrumental heritage.

Cultural fusion is currently taking place in all art forms and on all levels. In music, pop and jazz have played a key role. The Atlas Ensemble aims to refine this trend by bringing together the achievements of art music from distinct cultures. In doing so, the Atlas Ensemble is committed to respecting and preserving the invaluable trove of musical traditions, and to protecting them against the ever-looming threat of musical globalization – the downside of current artistic developments.

In writing for such a formation, composers must address complex issues. How are all these instruments to play together without doing an injustice to the integrity and traditions of the various cultures? Is it legitimate, for example, to regard a local instrument purely as a source of sound, independently of its cultural background, or is this a naïve or even flawed approach? How can a composer take full advantage of the virtuosity and spontaneity of a master of the tar, kemancha or kanun, while the player can hardly read music? How does he deal with the various tuning and tonal systems; which one should be applied? The use of microtones in non-Western music is highly refined. It would be arrogant and simplistic to force all the world’s instruments into the corset of our Western system. In order to achieve an equal, balanced exchange and effective cross-pollination, Western composers and musicians should ideally study non-Western tonal systems. Music students in Baku, Beijing or Tashkent have, after all, had the opportunity to become versed in Western music as well as their own musical traditions.

Just as the kelim and the clove have made their way into our Westerm households, the sheng and the qanun could just as easily become an everyday sight and sound at our conservatories, in our ensembles and in our orchestras. And just as Thai or Moroccan dishes are now common culinary fare world-wide, maqam, raga, pelog and slendro could one day belong to the universal cultural skills of young composers from Malaysia, Mexico and Madagascar.

The Atlas Ensemble has launched an ambitious effort to combine musicians from different cultures, with their local instruments, in a single chamber orchestra. It is essential to preserve a non-globalistic approach: everything must not start to sound alike, but the differences must be maintained, emphasized and respected. It is precisely those differences that harbour an overwhelming potential; together, composers and musicians reap the fruits of the world’s centuries-old cultural treasures and in doing so discover unforeseen as well as hoped-for combinations of sound colour, musical form, expression and playing techniques. For the creative spirit as well as the future of music, this is truly a gold mine.