Doing Collaborative Research on Symphonic Orchestra Audiences: Interventionist Ethnography of Music Practices

In this chapter, we will focus on research in the inter-and transdisciplinary collaboration between an orchestra, a higher arts education institute, and a university situated in the South of the Netherlands. Starting from the shared problem of how symphonic orchestras can shape new futures through innovating their practices, one project focused on studying and experimenting with artistically relevant forms of audience participation. It involved the design and organization of experimental concerts. Drawing on the work by Richard Sennett (Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation. Allen Lane, 2012) on cooperation, and his distinction between dialectic and dialogic conversations, we present fieldwork on one of these concerts. We show how the practical work to make an event happen can be traced through the many conversations that shaped the collaborative process. We conclude that cooperation is a skill that needs care, imagination, but also the open-endedness of continued learning from each other.