Masterclasses, rehearsals and concerts with near to zero latency
Along with a-synchronous online courses, the GC also offers Live Labs: live sessions with near to zero latency, that bridge the gap between our institutes on a new level.
From 2024 to 2026, the five GC partner institutions have conducted more than 70 Live Lab sessions, including lessons, rehearsals, workshops, public demonstrations, technical tests and research activities.
These sessions have been integrated into jazz, classical, improvisation, composition and cross-genre education. Alongside the artistic work, the partners continuously conduct practice-based research through project-steering meetings, teacher sessions and technical sessions.
This ongoing process helps develop new pedagogical strategies and improve technical practices for distributed music-making.
Check with your institute when you can join a GC Live Lab session!
Development
Over the course of our five year collaboration, the partners of the Global Conservatoire have been investing in new ways of distance learning.
In the 2024–2026 academic years, the Global Conservatoire made real-time, cross- border musical collaboration a central pillar of its curriculum and artistic identity. Rather than treating low-latency teaching as a technological showcase or occasional experiment, GC institutions embraced it as a regular, structured, and pedagogically integrated practice.
Over the course of the year, the five GC partners — CvA (Amsterdam), MSM (New York), RCM (London), MDW (Vienna), and RDAM (Copenhagen) — conducted more than 60 sessions, including:
Over 30 fully taught lessons, rehearsals and, workshops
Over 20 technical tests and connectivity experiments, including latency benchmarking and multi-point stress tests.
These sessions were not incidental. They were planned, scheduled, and integrated into course structures, covering instruments such as piano, strings, percussion, improvisation, arranging, and composition. Students and faculty co-created music, learned together, and tested the boundaries of remote performance.
Since 2024 the GC Live Lab has achieved:
- More than 70 Live Lab sessions across five partner institutions.
- All partners working with 4K MVTP systems and Dante-based audio.
- Live Labs integrated into GC course offering and education.
- Ongoing research into pedagogy, interaction, latency, multi-point connections and technical infrastructure.
- Low-latency rooms being developed and improved across the partner institutions.
- Cross-institutional ensembles, public performances and artist collaborations developing alongside regular teaching.
Impact
- Created sustainable, weekly low-latency teaching between institutions
- Supported ensemble rehearsals, improvisation, and 1-to-1 mentorship
- Enabled cross-Atlantic collaboration and three-point ensemble experiments
- Introduced students to future working models for hybrid, distributed music-making
Next Steps
The next phase focuses on embedding Live Labs more deeply into curricula, developing recurring cross-institutional ensembles (or remote ensembles) and artist residencies, expanding public performances, and sharing the pedagogical and technical knowledge developed through the collaboration.