ITER Research Ensemble is a vocal and research group formed in September 2022 within the Coro Facoltà di Musicologia – APS Association on the initiative of advanced and former students of the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage, University of Pavia in Cremona. Its members are young musicologists with a clear objective: to do research on the music they sing, and to sing the music they do research on.
Despite its recent foundation, ITER Research Ensemble has already worked on several projects. The ensemble has collaborated with organisations and institutions such as Fondazione Enzo Hruby and Associazione Musica con le Ali (Milan), Confucius Institute of the University of Milan, Centro Studi Luciano Berio (Florence), Ekomuzej-Ecomuseo Batana (Rovinj-Rovigno, Croatia), and has performed with various artists and groups, including Andrea Lucchesini, Nicolò Spera, “the “Nuove Quattro Colonne” Vocal Quartet, SAC-KUD “Marco Garbin” Choir and Dongxun Ensemble. It has moreover premiered works by Luciano Berio and Corrado Margutti.
In their dual activity—which sees them not only performing but also present at academic and research dissemination events—ITER and its members have taken part in various initiatives, such as the Luciano Berio Festival “Radicondoli 2023: Dialoghi“, the international conference Musicology in Progress, and the 7th Symposium of the ICTMD Study Group on Multipart Music. In the fall of 2024, the group was hosted as guests by the College of Music at the University of Colorado Boulder, where they performed concerts, conducted workshops, and held colloquia.
The ensemble recently recorded its first CD together with guitarist Nicolò Spera, published by Dynamic.
Manifesto
ITER Research Ensemble is a study group and collaborative experience which aims to cultivate both musical and academic aptitudes, developing research and artistic projects that enhance the creativity and scientific skills of its members.
ITER is a “study collective” that promotes hybrid forms of research dissemination and artistic production, addressed to both physical and digital audiences through live performances, publications, scientific events and audiovisual content.
Alongside the more traditional modes of research production and dissemination, one of the group’s aims is to experiment with and promote new forms of narration, oriented towards transmediality and the encounter between various forms of expression.
Going beyond the opposing perspectives of practice-led research and research-led practice, ITER promotes a way of “knowing-from-the-inside” in which the modes of experience themselves become part of the research, and the roles of cantor and researcher merge into a single figure: an ever more contemporary and modern counterpart of the medieval musicus.
More on this on a recent article (in Italian only; apologies for that!) by our member Rebecca Favale, “Ricerca e pratica: due anime per un coro. L’esperienza di ITER Research Ensemble”, Choraliter 73 (2024): 34–36 (excerpt).