colloqium48: Michel Roth & Inbar Sharet

Abstract

Musicking the Ferienkurse! set out to explore the Darmstadt Summer Courses (July 2025) as a game-like framework of New Music. At the center of this inquiry were its rules, its players, and its interplay with the surrounding urban environment. A diverse group of artistic researchers engaged simultaneously as participants, observers, and interventionists, documenting their experiences through multimedia practices supported by game-theoretical tools. Over two weeks, this process culminated in a lecture-performance that reframed the Ferienkurse from within.

The current presentation critically evaluates the outcomes of this experiment, highlighting both its artistic insights and methodological challenges, and opens the discussion on how the methodology of „participative observention“ can help to reconfigure musical institutions in a creative way.

Bios

Inbar Sharet is an Israeli-born composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist currently residing in Basel, Switzerland. His music has been performed by ensembles such as Meitar Ensemble (IL), Ensemble Zone Experimentale (CH), and Sonic Space Basel Alumni Ensemble (CH). He has participated as both a composer and performer in festivals, including “Tzlil Meudcan” (Tel Aviv, IL), “Spiel!” (Basel, CH), and “Opening festival (Trier, DE). Inbar holds a Master of Music in Composition from the Hochschule für Musik Basel, and a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University. Currently, he is pursuing his second master’s in music theory and pedagogy at the Hochschule für Musik Basel (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and Sonic Space Basel).  He has received prizes such as the Sharett Scholarship from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation (2022–2025) and the Klon Competition for Young Composers (2021)

Michel Roth is a composer and professor of composition, music theory and artistic research at the Basel University of Music (FHNW). He researches and publishes on musical applications of game theory and cybernetics (PhD from the University of Basel), collaborative art practices (Dieter Roth), organology of contemporary music and Alpine sound sociology (“Singende Seile”). As a composer and music researcher, he has received numerous prizes and grants, including the Musica Viva Munich Composition Prize for his orchestral piece Der Spaziergang (2009). His first opera, Im Bau, was staged by Georges Delnon at Theater Basel in 2011 and later released in a 3D simulated online environment (www.imbauprojekt.ch). His contemporary operetta Die Künstliche Mutter premiered at the Lucerne Festival in 2016. As the long-standing director of the Lucerne Studio for Contemporary Music, he worked with Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann and Sofia Gubaidulina, among others. Michel Roth is an associate researcher at the Institute of Alpine Cultures at the University of Lucerne and a member of the board of the Christoph Delz Foundation Basel.

Inbar Sharet is currently studying Master in Music Theory at the Hochschule für Musik Basel