On 17 October 2024, within the WAAE Athens Summit 2024, the student project Pierce Little Musicians DIY Orchestra is presented by primary-school students from Pierce – The American College of Greece. The activity connects music performance with the construction and use of digital musical instruments.
The ensemble combines digital musical instruments and tangible interfaces with piano, violin, and cello and uses graphic scores, improvisation, and experimental performance techniques. The presentation brings acoustic and digital media together within a collective student process of performance and music creation.
The digital instruments are part of the musical process itself, as students perform with devices they have previously built and tested. The relationship between making and performing affects how the group listens, improvises and coordinates. Presentation at WAAE brings this school practice into an international setting and highlights a model in which technology, construction and collective music-making operate as a single learning experience. This makes the performance itself part of the students’ design process.
