ENDGAME is an interactive electro-acoustic composition where a chess board is used as a musical instrument and tool to compose a musical world. This project is a collaboration with Adam Hart (University of Salford).

ENDGAME is perfomed by YOU, the audience as you are invited to play a game of chess with a stranger, producting the musical soundscape. It is a truly immersive event.

This work combines music and drama into one product where one cannot exist without the other. It explores, like many other composer including Johann Philipp Kirnberger in Der allezeit fertige Menuetten- und Polonaisencomponist (1757) the concept of Musikalisches Würfelspiel , gameplay within music. Chess specifically has been used as a basis for composition before in Zoltán Jeney’s End Game (1973) and C. Snow’s The Game of the Century (2014) and this composition brings a fresh thought process to the medium. The preparation of a Chess board is an idea used by Cage and Duchamp in Reunion (1968).

This is an M.A. Composition Performance by Dave Collins as he completes his Masters in Musical Composition at the University of Salford. Entry is free. For more information or to reserve a place, email d.h.collins@edu.salford.ac.uk.