In their music-making life, conductors usually contemplate many things. The topics can range from programming, trying to memorize the score, “interpreting” the music, planning rehearsals, and the list goes on infinitely. In this session, our conductor will contemplate on “now”, a mode of temporality, which, curiously, intricately relates to his creative process. The process that happens before a public performance includes at least three steps: learning the score, crafting the musical design (or the so-called “interpretation''), and conducting the ensemble in rehearsals. It is in these procedures that the idea of “now” or the “present time” is pervasive. It is there disguising in the form of ontological interrogation of the status and existence of a musical work. It can be in the form of an epistemological question such as how one can get to know and understand this music. It also can be of phenomenology when the conductor works with the sound produced by live musicians. Moreover, as music, in one definition, is a series of sonic events occurring on time, “now” arguably becomes the most decisive factor in the battleground of temporalities in music performance.

This session will be a conversation between Thanapol Setabrahamana, the “conductor” who will present his contemplation on many aspects of music making, and the “colloquist” Christoph Wichert, bassoonist of Singapore Symphony Orchestra, who will share his perspective on the presented subjects.