Scribbling Scores

Come explore musical creativity and text! Guided by composer Hannah Siddiqui we will write and interpret text scores towards a performance.
About this Event

Please note that this is a series of events, not a one off

Traditionally, western art music is notated on scores, through various symbols, dots and lines – a weird kind of language that sometimes, isn’t actually helpful for music-making and performance. But what if you could read a score without that hassle of dots and lines? You can. In fact, you’re doing it right now. In a sense, I’m in the middle of writing a text score. You’re in the middle of reading it! A text score is any piece of text that can be interpreted and performed, by anybody, not just musicians.

Join us for a series of sessions where we explore how to write and perform music from text scores. We’ll interpret different text scores, some more directional and literal, others more abstract and poetic, and we’ll even write our own text scores together, which will be performed in a public showcase. Everyone is welcome regardless of musical or artistic experience. You don’t have to be able to attend all the sessions but each one will be a fun, interesting, and supportive space!

Biography

Hannah is a composer, improviser, and poet based in north-west England, who studied at The University of Oxford (Worcester College) and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Her practice spans contemporary, improvised, folk, classical, and electroacoustic soundworlds, drawing on concepts like womanhood, interculturality, and human-nature relationships. Collaborations include a project with Chamber Music Scotland’s 2022-4 Ensemble in Residence, Dopey Monkey, in which northern industrial folk music hybridised with Hindustani Classical Music and contemporary composition and improvisation; a chamber piece based on PhD research on women’s writings about exile and multilingualism; a vocal quartet for The Carice Singers as part of the 2025 Cheltenham Music Festival; as well as several theatre, dance, and film projects. Hannah has also co-directed a grassroots opera in a disused shop and regularly performs in interdisciplinary free improvisation ensembles.

CoMA Glasgow has been an active branch of Contemporary Music for All since November 2019, running creative projects rooted in creative and participatory group music making. Through centring experimental, interpretive and flexible practices CoMA Glasgow works to programme cutting edge new work while letting everybody engage in creativity on any instrument with or without formal training in western musical styles.

Session dates

Online workshop 5-7pm Saturday 27th June

Online workshop 5-7pm Saturday 4th July

In person workshop 2:00-5:00pm Sunday 12th July

Rehearsal workshop 11am-5pm Saturday 18th July

Concert 2:30pm Sunday 19th July *VENUE TBC*

If you are hoping to join for the concert please attend as many of these as possible, especially including the rehearsal workshop on the 18th.

What you will need

Ideally bring an instrument (or your voice) and a pen or pencil to write with.

Access

All RCS spaces are wheelchair accessible by lift.

There will not be a sign language interpreter or live captioner.

If you have an access rider, please send it to us at [email protected] and we will do our best to make sure that you can get involved!