On Saturday March 11th 2017, members of the public responded to an open invitation to conduct the Salvation Army brass band at the Ashley Road Citadel in St Paul’s, Bristol. The only instruction given was: ‘Pick up the baton. Conduct the band however you like. They will follow you. No prior musical experience was necessary. Together, across the course of a day, a new musical score was created. 

Responding to the conductor’s gestures and movements, the band created a spontaneous and bespoke piece of music with each conductor which contributed to the score made on the day. The conductors writing the score included primary school children, Salvation Army congregation, musicians with experience of conducting, people with no experience of conducting and a deaf film-maker and artist.

The original 1896 Salvation Army Citadel building was replaced in 2015 by a new Community and Family Centre. To mark this development, Andy Ingamells was commissioned to produce a new public artwork. The artist began his research in the Citadel’s music archive, exploring 100 years of composing and performing. From this initial research and supported by Situations, he developed a proposal for a new score, written through a meeting between the brass band and the public.

Andy Ingamells is an experimental musician who develops unusual methods of composition that blur the line between composer and performer. He has dispersed brief instructions via the internet to be interpreted and performed in over 30 different countries during a single day, filled taxis with recorder players reading traffic lights as musical notation, invented the game of violin cricket, and completed a marathon five- day performance-journey across Europe inspired by organ music. ‘My practice is difficult to pin down, it hovers somewhere between art, music and theatre.’