On Friday, September 19, performer and composer Leila Adu will kick-off the new Friday at Six concert series at Swarthmore College. The series – hosted over select Fridays at 6 p.m. in Lang Concert Hall – includes on-stage interviews and performances showcasing modern music. The performances align with series creative producer and Swarthmore Visiting Assistant Professor Quinn Collins’ own work on electronic music technology and improvisation, which he teaches in the Introduction to Music Technology class at Swarthmore. 

Collins’ approach to composition involves a “studio as instrument” process, by which material is generated through collaborative improvisation, and edited into tracks during composition. Before coming to Swarthmore in 2019, he received three degrees in composition: a Bachelors from the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, a Masters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a PhD at Princeton University. This year, Collins became a full-time faculty member at Swarthmore, and will teach Composition in addition to Intro to Music Technology.

“With composition, I'm more likely to push them out of their comfort zone, and I may have them defend a lot of the ideas they are doing and to ask them the questions they ought to be asking themselves when they're working,” Collins said. “That person is not going to have a teacher forever. You want to help them discover the skills that they need for things like self-criticism.

Collins still benefits from lessons in composition and self-critique taught to him by his high school music teacher. He tries to offer those lessons on the power of collaborative efforts to his students through in-class critiques where students share work with each other. While the class is listening to each other's music together, Collins believes they experience a different way of hearing it than they would have working alone. 

Collins went on to explain the power of collaborative improvisation on composers. “When you [improvise], you’re going to access things in your subconscious that you might not otherwise. When you bring another person into that, it expands the possibilities. As a composer, when you experience new ways that different musicians interact, that’s going to inspire different choices compositionally."

Collins described working in the studios at the University of Illinois as a “game changer.” Illinois’ electronic music studio, founded in 1958 as one of the first in the Western hemisphere, appealed to Collins as a tactile learner as he handled cables and moved around the studio adjusting plugs. He also credited Princeton’s approach to composition of celebrating imperfections and accidents as affirming while he diverged from traditional, classical composing methods. 

The first artist performing for the Friday at Six series is Leila Adu, who Collins met while at Princeton. Together, they started “Livestock Exchange,” an improvised music series, and The Miz’ries, a noisy electronic music trio, with Jeff Snyder. Adu and Collins also founded the label Belts & Whistles, under which the Miz’ries’ debut album Emotional Performance Motorcycle was released. Since then, the label has released more music, and celebrated its 10th anniversary in September 2024 with a show in Manhattan. 

Adu has also composed for many groups including Bang on a Can, the London Sinfonietta, the Brentano String Quartet (performing at Swarthmore on October 24), Mivos String Quartet, and Orchestra Wellington. Her latest album, Moonstone & Tar Sands, released in 2024, features PUBLIQuartet, an improvisational string quartet. 

“When you look up ‘cosmopolitan’ in the dictionary, you will see a picture of Leila,” Collins said, highlighting Adu’s roots in New Zealand, the UK, and Ghana, and academic research on African diaspora electronic music as a tenured professor at New York University.  “She’s been one of my best friends for a long time, but I would still struggle to provide a full list of all the countries she has lived in.  Unless we are in the same room, I am never 100% certain what continent she is currently on.”

At her Friday at Six show, Adu will perform piano and sing as part of a trio with Spencer Murphey on bass and David Frazier on drums; Collins said this trio is his favorite of Adu’s collaborative sections. 

The series will continue on November 7, with Roberta Michel performing flute and electronics. Collins hopes her visit will inspire flautists in the department to experiment with their music. While not a composer herself, Michel embodies the same spirit of experimentation as the other two guests.

“She is a champion of living composers and has devoted herself to a certain niche, and through this has developed a unique artistic personality, so in that sense [Michel] fits right in,” Collins said. 

Concluding the inaugural series on January 30, Mel Hsu will perform vocal and cello, augmented with electronics. Collins first heard Hsu’s music in The Wilma’s production of The Good Person of Setzuan, and chose to invite her to inspire students to experiment with their traditional Western instruments.

In his first year as a full-time Visiting Assistant Professor, Collins is looking forward to continuing to use the opportunity to grow the college’s modern and collaborative music programming. “I’m excited!  I get to work alongside a lot of great folks who let me do things like Friday at Six!” Visit the Concerts & Events section of the Swarthmore Music Departments website for more information on the Friday at Six concert series and all the other programming happening this year in Lang Concert Hall.