Colloquium 48 - Luk Vaes: The HIPEX Project. Historical Performance Practices of Experimental Music

The second half of the 20th century saw an exploration of performance practices that was both radical and systematic. The full investigation of extended techniques for each instrument, the decisive pushing of the limits of playability, the ruthless questioning of every aspect of traditional notation, the development of new ways to make music together, and the position of technology in all of this, impacted performance practice in its diversity as well as fundamentally. This innovation wasn’t always the sole result of composers’ impulses: often, historical performers were directly involved in putting authorial thoughts onto paper, sometimes helping to create new performance practices and starting new traditions. Even a new type of performer emerged: the expert soloist who travels the world to work with composers and premiere and record new compositions dedicated to him. The HIPEX project is set up to scrutinize and document the position of such musicians with respect to the composers they worked with and the scores they played, as well as their influence on the performance practice of the works that they premiered and disseminated, and issues of performance practice of specific iconic works. Next to repertoire, personalities are researched as well as types of collaborations they were/are engaged in.

Luk Vaes studied piano with a.o. Claude Coppens (Belgium), Aloys Kontarsky (Germany) and Yvar Mikhashoff (US), won first prizes in several international competitions and concertized with musicians such as Uri Caine and Thomas Quasthoff at the most renowned festivals in the EU and US.

His recordings of piano works of Mauricio Kagel (Winter & Winter) won nine international prizes. In 2009 he obtained his doctorate at Leiden University (through the docARTES programme). His dissertation on the theory, history and performance practice of extended piano techniques has since enjoyed widespread usage by practitioners.

Currently he is fellow in artistic research of the Orpheus Research Centre, coordinates the doctoral program for artists (docARTES) at the Orpheus Institute and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.