precept.concept.percept XIX.
—
PROGRAM STRUCTURE
The residency unfolds through three consecutive stages. Each stage has a distinct function within the overall process, moving from the presentation and contextualization of participants’ practices to the collaborative development, rehearsal, and public performance of new works.
Stage I. | September–October 2026
2 online workshops
The first stage establishes the artistic and discursive foundations of the residency.
Participants introduce their practices, working methods, selected works, current projects, and central artistic questions. These presentations create a shared context for understanding the compositional, interpretative, technical, and methodological positions represented within the program.
Composers present the concepts, materials, scores, sketches, or existing works they intend to develop. Performers and ensembles introduce their interpretative practices, technical interests, repertoire experience, approaches to rehearsal, and modes of collaborative work.
The workshops support an initial exchange of perspectives and enable participants to identify questions that will guide the development of the works. Attention may be directed toward the relationship between artistic intention and material realization, the role of the performer in the compositional process, the practical implications of notation, and the conceptual framework of the edition.
Stage I includes:
The purpose of this stage is not to finalize projects, but to establish a sufficiently precise basis for their subsequent development. Participants begin to articulate what their work requires, which assumptions it carries, and how collaboration may contribute to its transformation.
Stage II. | December 2026–January 2027
2 online workshops
The second stage focuses on the detailed development of the participating works and on their transition from compositional proposition to interpretative and performative realization.
Composers present developed drafts, scores, notation systems, structural plans, recordings, technical materials, or other relevant documents. Performers and ensembles engage with these materials through reading, analysis, discussion, and interpretative reflection.
This stage creates a space in which artistic and practical questions can be addressed before the on-site residency. Depending on the character of each project, discussion may concern notation, form, duration, pacing, instrumentation, vocal or instrumental technique, articulation, timbre, balance, spatial organization, electronics, coordination, rehearsal methodology, or the relation between conceptual premises and perceptible outcomes.
Score reading is treated not only as the decoding of written information, but as an analytical encounter among compositional intention, notational form, embodied technique, and interpretative judgment. Participants consider how a score communicates, what kinds of actions and relations it produces, and where ambiguity, resistance, or unforeseen possibility may become artistically productive.
Stage II includes:
By the conclusion of Stage II, participants should possess a clearer understanding of the artistic, technical, interpretative, and logistical conditions required for the on-site phase. The works need not be understood as definitively complete; rather, they should be sufficiently articulated to enter an intensive process of rehearsal, testing, refinement, and realization.
Stage III. | June 2027
On-site residency at the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week
The final stage takes place in Bled, Slovenia, within the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week.
During the on-site residency, composers, performers, and ensembles work together in an intensive environment dedicated to the realization and public presentation of the participating works. Materials developed through the online stages are brought into rehearsal, where they can be tested under concrete acoustic, spatial, technical, embodied, and interpersonal conditions.
The on-site phase is not conceived solely as the execution of decisions made in advance. Rehearsal remains an active stage of artistic development. Participants may discover that certain materials require clarification, expansion, reduction, reorganization, or reinterpretation. The encounter between score and performance may reveal new formal, sonic, technical, or conceptual possibilities.
Composers are present within the rehearsal process and can respond directly to the material realization of their work. Performers and ensembles develop interpretative positions through repeated reading, listening, discussion, experimentation, and collective decision-making.
Stage III includes:
The public performances constitute the culmination of the residency while remaining connected to the processes through which the works were formed. They present composition, interpretation, rehearsal, reflection, and collaboration as interdependent dimensions of artistic production.
Where applicable, the festival presentations may include premieres or first public realizations of works developed through the residency.
—
MODES OF WORK
The program combines several interconnected modes of artistic and critical activity.
Artistic presentation and contextualization
Participants present their practices, methodologies, selected works, and current projects. Presentation is understood as an act of articulation through which working processes, artistic premises, and unresolved questions become available for collective examination.
Collaborative development
Composers, performers, and ensembles engage in sustained exchange around the participating works. This may involve discussion, score reading, testing, revision, interpretative experimentation, technical consultation, and the negotiation of artistic decisions.
Score reading and analysis
Scores and related materials are examined both as compositional structures and as propositions for action. Analysis may address form, notation, temporality, timbre, technique, ensemble relations, interpretative possibilities, and the conceptual organization of the work.
Interpretative inquiry
Performers and ensembles investigate how a work can be realized without reducing interpretation to compliance with written instructions. Attention is given to judgment, embodiment, listening, agency, responsiveness, and the production of musical meaning through performance.
Critical reflection
Participants examine the assumptions, values, methods, and contexts informing their practices. Reflection concerns individual works, collaborative relations, rehearsal processes, and the broader conceptual framework of the residency.
Rehearsal as knowledge production
Rehearsal is approached as a site at which artistic knowledge is generated. It reveals how a work functions in practice, how musical materials behave under performative conditions, and how compositional and interpretative decisions interact over time.
Public performance
The works are presented at the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week. Public performance enables the projects to enter a wider artistic and discursive context and provides a point of culmination for the extended residency process.
—
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
The residency may support inquiry into questions such as:
How can performers contribute to a work before its compositional form is considered complete?
What kinds of knowledge are produced through reading, rehearsal, interpretation, and performance?
How do notation systems distribute responsibility and agency?
How do instruments, voices, bodies, technologies, and spaces condition compositional thought?
What happens when interpretative resistance or technical difficulty becomes a source of artistic development?
How can rehearsal function as a critical and analytical method?
How are authorship and responsibility negotiated within composer–performer collaboration?
In what ways can a work remain open to transformation while retaining formal and conceptual coherence?
How do collaborative processes alter the identities, methods, and assumptions of those involved?
What forms of artistic relation might be produced through grounding, composition of mind, and [emancipatory practices]?
These questions are neither exhaustive nor mandatory. They indicate the kinds of compositional, interpretative, methodological, and ethical inquiry that the residency is designed to sustain.
DATES
MENTORS
ARTISTIC PREMISE
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
PROGRAM STRUCTURE
WHO THE RESIDENCY IS FOR
ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT
INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE
ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES
WHY PARTICIPATE?
APPLICATION
The precept.concept.percept program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io