Maria Puusaari: Leading in contemporary music performance
Complete title of the doctoral degree: “Leading” as a mode of interaction and communication in contemporary music performance-practice on the violin
- The panel which assessed the artistic demonstrations: Doctor of Music Anu Lampela (Chair), Doctor of Music Juho Laitinen, Professor, Doctor Barbara Lüneburg, Doctor of Music Merit Palas Professor Veli-Matti Puumala
- Examiner of the thesis: Professor, Doctor Barbara Lüneburg
- Chair: Professor, Doctor Mieko Kanno
Programme
Opening of the public examination
Lectio praecursoria
Performance during the lectio: Jarkko Hartikainen: Baby-talking jive (Maria Puusaari, violin, Anna-Sofia Anttonen, saxophone)
Statement of the artistic component: Doctor of Music Anu Lampela
Statement of the written component: Professor, Doctor Barbara Lüneburg
Discussion
Final Statements: Professor, Doctor Barbara Lüneburg, Doctor of Music Anu Lampela
Audience questions
Closing of the public examination
About the doctoral project
My doctoral concert series At the Edge of the Sound – Violin as a Medium for Composers’ Expression consisted of solo violin works and chamber music composed after the Second World War to the present day. Moreover, I commissioned new works for violin by Jukka Koskinen, Jouni Hirvelä, Maija Hynninen, Jarkko Hartikainen and Veli Kujala. As an important part of my doctoral concert series and my performance-practice, these commissions expanded the violin repertoire by providing versatile works featuring electronics, video, lights, ecologic technologies, vocalization, and performative elements. The concert series included following concerts:
- The Heritage of Dodecaphony
- The Darmstadt Smelter
- Road Movies – From Neoclassicism to Neoromanticism
- On the Edge of Sounds
- Commemoration of the Postmodern
I wanted to explore the versatile challenges of contemporary violin repertoire and develop its performance-practice. My goal was to remove the imaginary boundaries of “new music” closer to today. The time period of over seventy years accommodates a vast variety of compositional styles. Various developments and “-isms” of music in the late 20th century were represented by serialism, post-serialism, postmodernism, neoclassicism, neoromanticism, aleatoricism, stochastic music, minimalism, post-spectralism, and the use of extended playing techniques and electronics.
In my practice-based doctoral study I explored leading as a mode of interaction and communication in contemporary music performance-practice on the violin. Hence, I approached also the concert series and the performed works through varied leading practices. Leading is an essential musical and bodily skill that refers to cueing, conducting, directing, and synchronizing the ensemble performance with instrumental and physical indications while playing an instrument. Due to the complexity of the musical material, leading in a contemporary music performance may provide multiple challenges compared to leading in more classical repertoire.
In my study and concert series I approached leading in three different contexts: leading in a chamber ensemble context, leading in a solo performance, and leading a solo violin performance in a multimedia context, the latter including electronics, live-electronics, video, and other types of media. I performed several chamber music works that required constant leading and provided an excellent platform to reflect on varied leading practices. Through solo violin works I explored the ways in which a leader’s attitude and temporal and expressive ensemble leading techniques and practices could be applied in a solo performance to emphasize temporal structures, phrasing, dynamics, articulation and overall interpretation.
I approached leading through different ensemble roles and designated and shared leadership. I created personal instrument-specific temporal and expressive leading techniques and gestures and explored, how leading techniques, performance gestures, breathing, gazes, varying ensemble roles, notational practices, metaphors, and different focus-of- attention conditions can be used as a strategy to improve the performance-practice of contemporary works.
Shared leadership and alternating and rotating leading practices among the ensemble members became the most elementary part of my performance-practice that provided the best musical results. I found that leading can be used as a method to improve physical performance skills and the embodied interaction and communication of contemporary music between the performers and audience. Awareness of different leading practices accelerated and intensified the learning process of new repertoire and improved my overall musical and physical performance skills, such as listening, musical perception and anticipation, verbal and embodied communication and interaction, and flexibility in mutual adaptation as well as the communication of music. Moreover, improved leading practices helped me to understand, follow, support, and adapt to other musicians’ leading practices and to different ensemble roles.
I conceptualized leading in a solo performance as a leader’s attitude. My goal for leading in a solo performance was to lead my own actions and to lead the audience to perceive the music and participate in the listening. I integrated both temporal and expressive leading gestures in my solo practice to emphasize the structural, rhythmic and expressive musical details. For example, leading myself often revealed musical structures and references. This kind of associative leading helped to analyze and interpret the work and to communicate the music to the audience. I used intentional leading as a strategy to emphasize the musical expression by bodily and instrumental movements, gazes, and theatrical performance gestures. In orchestral leading, I used the temporal and expressive leading gestures of an orchestra section leader in order to activate the whole body and to enhance external focus-of-attention towards the audience. The most surprising finding in my study was the importance of alternating ensemble roles in the works for solo violin and multimedia. To synchronize my performance with electronics and video, I unconsciously adopted into different leader and ensemble roles.
During the time of my studies, the global COVID-19 pandemic threatened human lives. Most of the cultural events and musical performances were cancelled and work in chamber ensembles and orchestras was restricted. Despite the pandemic, I was fortunate to be able to perform all of the doctoral concerts in the presence of an audience. However, the safety distances and facial masks provided new challenges for performances and made musical and gestural communication of music more difficult. Due to the decreased visibility and audibility between the performers, timing reactions became slower and synchronization more scattered than in a normal, closely seated performance. Despite these difficulties, I found that the experience of restricted interaction and need of larger leading gestures extended my physical capacity in leading.
Abstract of the thesis
My artistic doctoral degree work, “Leading” as a mode of interaction and communication in contemporary music performance-practice on the violin, consists of five concerts, two peer-reviewed research articles, and this summary, which contextualizes the two articles within the overall doctoral project and identifies links with the concerts presented as the artistic component of the project.
The doctoral concert series, At the Edge of the Sound – Violin as a Medium for Composers’ Expression, consisted of solo violin works and chamber music composed after the Second World War to the present day. To expand the violin repertoire, I commissioned new works by Jukka Koskinen, Jouni Hirvelä, Jarkko Hartikainen, Maija Hynninen, and Veli Kujala.
In my practice-based artistic doctoral study I explored leading as a mode of interaction and communication between myself, my fellow performers, the audience, and the performed compositions in the context of contemporary music performance-practice. Leading is an elementary physical skill that refers to directing, conducting, cueing, and synchronizing the ensemble performance with bodily and instrumental indications while playing an instrument. Due to the increased complexity of the musical material, leading in a contemporary music ensemble provides multiple challenges compared to leading in the Classical or Romantic repertoire.
In the first article, “Leading” as a mode of interaction and communication in contemporary music performance-practice (Trio 2021), I explored leading as a multimodal, crossmodal, and multidirectional interactive process in a chamber ensemble context. My study was grounded in Leman’s theory of expressive alignment and enactment process (2016) and various other studies on embodied interaction, gestural communication, and synchronization; it also reflected on diverse social roles and leadership in chamber music ensembles. Through three case-studies, I illustrated various leading practices and alternating ensemble roles that had emerged in my performance-practice. I classified musical ensemble roles as leader, co-leader or supportive leader, and follower,and divided leadership into two categories, designated and shared leadership. I divided leading into temporal and expressive leading techniques,which are used to express various temporal and expressive musical features. I found several sensorimotor, instrument-specific, notational, temporal, socio-cultural, and acoustical factors affecting leading practices. Hence, I argue that leading techniques must be consciously practiced and embedded in body language as separate, instrument-specific playing techniques.
The second article, ‘Leading’ as a strategy in the performance-practice of contemporary solo violin music (Music Performance Research 2024), provided a leading-based approach to the performance-practice of contemporary works for solo violin. The theoretical context for this study was based on the theory of focus-of-attention and music-related studies on physical gestures. I used two case-studies to explore which specific temporal and expressive ensemble leading techniques and practices could be applied in a solo performance to emphasize interpretation, temporal structures, phrasing, dynamics, and articulation. I demonstrated how notational practices, performance gestures, leading techniques, varying ensemble roles (within a solo performance context), metaphors, and different focus-of-attention conditions can be used as a strategy to improve the performance-practice of contemporary works for solo violin. I argue that leading in a solo performance serves two purposes: leading my own actions and leading the audience to perceive the music and participate in the listening.
Within the different works presented in my concert series At the Edge of the Sound – Violin as a Medium for Composers’ Expression, I explored varied leading practices, the quality and character of leading gestures, and breathing as a method of timing and unifying the ensemble synchronization.
Despite being a designated leader in the beginning of each rehearsal project, shared and rotated leadership and active co-leadership became the most elementary practices in my performance-practice. I propose that the ability to recognize and utilize different ensemble practices and the variable functions of leading gestures clarifies and speeds up the rehearsal processes.
I identified various leading types. In orchestral leading, I used different temporal and expressive leading gestures of an orchestra section leader, which activated the body language and helped me focus attention externally. Associative leading revealed musical structures, musical references, and gestural associations that affected my analysis and interpretation of music and helped to communicate music to the audience. In intentional leading, I emphasized the musical expression by conscious bodily movements, gazes, and theatrical gestures.
The solo violin performance and the multimedia performance had a different mode of communication and interaction. The works for violin, electronics, and other media provided both visual and audible material that functioned as a leader, to which I had to adapt my performance. Hence, my study suggests that leading as a method of interaction and communication involves three different orientations and contexts: leading in a chamber ensemble context, leading in a solo performance, and leading a solo violin performance in a multimedia context, the latter including electronics, live-electronics, video, and other types of media.
Keywords: Artistic Research, Chamber Ensemble, Contemporary music, Embodied Interaction, Focus-of-attention, Leading, Leadership, Solo violin
Maria Puusaari
Puusaari is a contemporary music activist best known from the Uusinta Ensemble and the Uusinta String Quartet. She has commissioned and premiered a big number of works. Puusaari has performed at various festivals and concert series in Europe and the United States. She teaches contemporary music regularly to composers and musicians in Finland as well as abroad. In 2019-2022, Puusaari served as the artistic director of the Uuden Musiikin Lokakuu Contemporary Music Festival in Oulu, Finland. Apart from contemporary music, Puusaari plays classical chamber music in her own recitals, with the Airo String Quartet as well as with the Fräki-Puusaari-Rysä piano trio. She combines music and poetry in projects with the poet Suvi Valli. Apart from western art music, she has co-operated with the flamenco dancer Katja Lundén and the Beninese musician and composer Noël Saïzonou.
Since 2002, Puusaari is a member of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Puusaari has recorded solo and chamber works for both CD and the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE). She has made several TV transmissions of orchestral and chamber music for YLE television. Maria Puusaari started her studies at the Oulu Conservatoire under Anne Siira and Lara Lev, and continued them with Merit Palas at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. She graduated from the Sibelius Academy in 2003 with the highest possible grades. Puusaari complemented her studies in Budapest under Vilmos Szabadi, and in Paris under Hae-Sun Kang. In 2025, Puusaari completed her doctoral studies at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts under the supervision of professor, Dr. Mieko Kanno. In her practice-based artistic doctoral study Puusaari explores leading as a mode of interaction and communication in the context of contemporary music performance-practice on the violin.
More information
Maria Puusaari
maria.puusaari@uniarts.fi
Complete title of the doctoral degree: “Leading” as a mode of interaction and communication in contemporary music performance-practice on the violin
- The panel which assessed the artistic demonstrations: Doctor of Music Anu Lampela (Chair), Doctor of Music Juho Laitinen, Professor, Doctor Barbara Lüneburg, Doctor of Music Merit Palas Professor Veli-Matti Puumala
- Examiner of the thesis: Professor, Doctor Barbara Lüneburg
- Chair: Professor, Doctor Mieko Kanno
Programme
Opening of the public examination
Lectio praecursoria
Performance during the lectio: Jarkko Hartikainen: Baby-talking jive (Maria Puusaari, violin, Anna-Sofia Anttonen, saxophone)
Statement of the artistic component: Doctor of Music Anu Lampela
Statement of the written component: Professor, Doctor Barbara Lüneburg
Discussion
Final Statements: Professor, Doctor Barbara Lüneburg, Doctor of Music Anu Lampela
Audience questions
Closing of the public examination
About the doctoral project
My doctoral concert series At the Edge of the Sound – Violin as a Medium for Composers’ Expression consisted of solo violin works and chamber music composed after the Second World War to the present day. Moreover, I commissioned new works for violin by Jukka Koskinen, Jouni Hirvelä, Maija Hynninen, Jarkko Hartikainen and Veli Kujala. As an important part of my doctoral concert series and my performance-practice, these commissions expanded the violin repertoire by providing versatile works featuring electronics, video, lights, ecologic technologies, vocalization, and performative elements. The concert series included following concerts:
- The Heritage of Dodecaphony
- The Darmstadt Smelter
- Road Movies – From Neoclassicism to Neoromanticism
- On the Edge of Sounds
- Commemoration of the Postmodern
I wanted to explore the versatile challenges of contemporary violin repertoire and develop its performance-practice. My goal was to remove the imaginary boundaries of “new music” closer to today. The time period of over seventy years accommodates a vast variety of compositional styles. Various developments and “-isms” of music in the late 20th century were represented by serialism, post-serialism, postmodernism, neoclassicism, neoromanticism, aleatoricism, stochastic music, minimalism, post-spectralism, and the use of extended playing techniques and electronics.
In my practice-based doctoral study I explored leading as a mode of interaction and communication in contemporary music performance-practice on the violin. Hence, I approached also the concert series and the performed works through varied leading practices. Leading is an essential musical and bodily skill that refers to cueing, conducting, directing, and synchronizing the ensemble performance with instrumental and physical indications while playing an instrument. Due to the complexity of the musical material, leading in a contemporary music performance may provide multiple challenges compared to leading in more classical repertoire.
In my study and concert series I approached leading in three different contexts: leading in a chamber ensemble context, leading in a solo performance, and leading a solo violin performance in a multimedia context, the latter including electronics, live-electronics, video, and other types of media. I performed several chamber music works that required constant leading and provided an excellent platform to reflect on varied leading practices. Through solo violin works I explored the ways in which a leader’s attitude and temporal and expressive ensemble leading techniques and practices could be applied in a solo performance to emphasize temporal structures, phrasing, dynamics, articulation and overall interpretation.
I approached leading through different ensemble roles and designated and shared leadership. I created personal instrument-specific temporal and expressive leading techniques and gestures and explored, how leading techniques, performance gestures, breathing, gazes, varying ensemble roles, notational practices, metaphors, and different focus-of- attention conditions can be used as a strategy to improve the performance-practice of contemporary works.
Shared leadership and alternating and rotating leading practices among the ensemble members became the most elementary part of my performance-practice that provided the best musical results. I found that leading can be used as a method to improve physical performance skills and the embodied interaction and communication of contemporary music between the performers and audience. Awareness of different leading practices accelerated and intensified the learning process of new repertoire and improved my overall musical and physical performance skills, such as listening, musical perception and anticipation, verbal and embodied communication and interaction, and flexibility in mutual adaptation as well as the communication of music. Moreover, improved leading practices helped me to understand, follow, support, and adapt to other musicians’ leading practices and to different ensemble roles.
I conceptualized leading in a solo performance as a leader’s attitude. My goal for leading in a solo performance was to lead my own actions and to lead the audience to perceive the music and participate in the listening. I integrated both temporal and expressive leading gestures in my solo practice to emphasize the structural, rhythmic and expressive musical details. For example, leading myself often revealed musical structures and references. This kind of associative leading helped to analyze and interpret the work and to communicate the music to the audience. I used intentional leading as a strategy to emphasize the musical expression by bodily and instrumental movements, gazes, and theatrical performance gestures. In orchestral leading, I used the temporal and expressive leading gestures of an orchestra section leader in order to activate the whole body and to enhance external focus-of-attention towards the audience. The most surprising finding in my study was the importance of alternating ensemble roles in the works for solo violin and multimedia. To synchronize my performance with electronics and video, I unconsciously adopted into different leader and ensemble roles.
During the time of my studies, the global COVID-19 pandemic threatened human lives. Most of the cultural events and musical performances were cancelled and work in chamber ensembles and orchestras was restricted. Despite the pandemic, I was fortunate to be able to perform all of the doctoral concerts in the presence of an audience. However, the safety distances and facial masks provided new challenges for performances and made musical and gestural communication of music more difficult. Due to the decreased visibility and audibility between the performers, timing reactions became slower and synchronization more scattered than in a normal, closely seated performance. Despite these difficulties, I found that the experience of restricted interaction and need of larger leading gestures extended my physical capacity in leading.
Abstract of the thesis
My artistic doctoral degree work, “Leading” as a mode of interaction and communication in contemporary music performance-practice on the violin, consists of five concerts, two peer-reviewed research articles, and this summary, which contextualizes the two articles within the overall doctoral project and identifies links with the concerts presented as the artistic component of the project.
The doctoral concert series, At the Edge of the Sound – Violin as a Medium for Composers’ Expression, consisted of solo violin works and chamber music composed after the Second World War to the present day. To expand the violin repertoire, I commissioned new works by Jukka Koskinen, Jouni Hirvelä, Jarkko Hartikainen, Maija Hynninen, and Veli Kujala.
In my practice-based artistic doctoral study I explored leading as a mode of interaction and communication between myself, my fellow performers, the audience, and the performed compositions in the context of contemporary music performance-practice. Leading is an elementary physical skill that refers to directing, conducting, cueing, and synchronizing the ensemble performance with bodily and instrumental indications while playing an instrument. Due to the increased complexity of the musical material, leading in a contemporary music ensemble provides multiple challenges compared to leading in the Classical or Romantic repertoire.
In the first article, “Leading” as a mode of interaction and communication in contemporary music performance-practice (Trio 2021), I explored leading as a multimodal, crossmodal, and multidirectional interactive process in a chamber ensemble context. My study was grounded in Leman’s theory of expressive alignment and enactment process (2016) and various other studies on embodied interaction, gestural communication, and synchronization; it also reflected on diverse social roles and leadership in chamber music ensembles. Through three case-studies, I illustrated various leading practices and alternating ensemble roles that had emerged in my performance-practice. I classified musical ensemble roles as leader, co-leader or supportive leader, and follower,and divided leadership into two categories, designated and shared leadership. I divided leading into temporal and expressive leading techniques,which are used to express various temporal and expressive musical features. I found several sensorimotor, instrument-specific, notational, temporal, socio-cultural, and acoustical factors affecting leading practices. Hence, I argue that leading techniques must be consciously practiced and embedded in body language as separate, instrument-specific playing techniques.
The second article, ‘Leading’ as a strategy in the performance-practice of contemporary solo violin music (Music Performance Research 2024), provided a leading-based approach to the performance-practice of contemporary works for solo violin. The theoretical context for this study was based on the theory of focus-of-attention and music-related studies on physical gestures. I used two case-studies to explore which specific temporal and expressive ensemble leading techniques and practices could be applied in a solo performance to emphasize interpretation, temporal structures, phrasing, dynamics, and articulation. I demonstrated how notational practices, performance gestures, leading techniques, varying ensemble roles (within a solo performance context), metaphors, and different focus-of-attention conditions can be used as a strategy to improve the performance-practice of contemporary works for solo violin. I argue that leading in a solo performance serves two purposes: leading my own actions and leading the audience to perceive the music and participate in the listening.
Within the different works presented in my concert series At the Edge of the Sound – Violin as a Medium for Composers’ Expression, I explored varied leading practices, the quality and character of leading gestures, and breathing as a method of timing and unifying the ensemble synchronization.
Despite being a designated leader in the beginning of each rehearsal project, shared and rotated leadership and active co-leadership became the most elementary practices in my performance-practice. I propose that the ability to recognize and utilize different ensemble practices and the variable functions of leading gestures clarifies and speeds up the rehearsal processes.
I identified various leading types. In orchestral leading, I used different temporal and expressive leading gestures of an orchestra section leader, which activated the body language and helped me focus attention externally. Associative leading revealed musical structures, musical references, and gestural associations that affected my analysis and interpretation of music and helped to communicate music to the audience. In intentional leading, I emphasized the musical expression by conscious bodily movements, gazes, and theatrical gestures.
The solo violin performance and the multimedia performance had a different mode of communication and interaction. The works for violin, electronics, and other media provided both visual and audible material that functioned as a leader, to which I had to adapt my performance. Hence, my study suggests that leading as a method of interaction and communication involves three different orientations and contexts: leading in a chamber ensemble context, leading in a solo performance, and leading a solo violin performance in a multimedia context, the latter including electronics, live-electronics, video, and other types of media.
Keywords: Artistic Research, Chamber Ensemble, Contemporary music, Embodied Interaction, Focus-of-attention, Leading, Leadership, Solo violin
Maria Puusaari
Puusaari is a contemporary music activist best known from the Uusinta Ensemble and the Uusinta String Quartet. She has commissioned and premiered a big number of works. Puusaari has performed at various festivals and concert series in Europe and the United States. She teaches contemporary music regularly to composers and musicians in Finland as well as abroad. In 2019-2022, Puusaari served as the artistic director of the Uuden Musiikin Lokakuu Contemporary Music Festival in Oulu, Finland. Apart from contemporary music, Puusaari plays classical chamber music in her own recitals, with the Airo String Quartet as well as with the Fräki-Puusaari-Rysä piano trio. She combines music and poetry in projects with the poet Suvi Valli. Apart from western art music, she has co-operated with the flamenco dancer Katja Lundén and the Beninese musician and composer Noël Saïzonou.
Since 2002, Puusaari is a member of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Puusaari has recorded solo and chamber works for both CD and the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE). She has made several TV transmissions of orchestral and chamber music for YLE television. Maria Puusaari started her studies at the Oulu Conservatoire under Anne Siira and Lara Lev, and continued them with Merit Palas at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. She graduated from the Sibelius Academy in 2003 with the highest possible grades. Puusaari complemented her studies in Budapest under Vilmos Szabadi, and in Paris under Hae-Sun Kang. In 2025, Puusaari completed her doctoral studies at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts under the supervision of professor, Dr. Mieko Kanno. In her practice-based artistic doctoral study Puusaari explores leading as a mode of interaction and communication in the context of contemporary music performance-practice on the violin.
More information
Maria Puusaari
maria.puusaari@uniarts.fi