Menu
Innerpage Banner

2012

10 October 2012
Visiting Fellowship programme – third phase announced
CMPCP is now seeking applications for the third phase of its Visiting Fellowship programme. Visiting Fellowships are offered on a competitive basis to musicologists, musicians and those working in cognate fields from the UK and overseas who wish to spend up to three months undertaking collaborative research at any one of the Centre’s partner institutions. Further details can be found here. For information about past and present Visiting Fellows click here.

30 August 2012
CMPCP PhD student awarded scholarship to undertake study at the Library of Congress
Myles Eastwood, who holds a CMPCP studentship at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded an AHRC International Placement Scheme (IPS) scholarship to undertake study at the Library of Congress. The IPS scheme aims ‘to support and encourage the placement of UK postgraduate students and early career researchers on short-term fellowships at a number of overseas research institutions’ and consists of a contribution towards travel and subsistence costs. Myles will undertake a three-month listening project provisionally entitled ‘The American Invasion’, which will assess the influence of US blues 78 records on UK blues revival LPs of the 1960s. CMPCP congratulates Myles on this achievement.

19 July 2012
Music and Shape conference: London, 12-14 July 2012
CMPCP’s Shaping Music in Performance project hosted an international conference from 12 to 14 July 2012 at the Senate House, University of London. Some 55 delegates attended the three-day event, which aimed to explore relationships between music and shape from as many perspectives as possible. Rolf Inge Godøy gave a keynote paper entitled ‘Postures, trajectories, and sonic shapes’, and there were various performances throughout the event. The full conference programme can be seen here.

A special issue of the journal Empirical Musicology Review focused on the Music and Shape conference will be published in 2013. Click here for further details.

29 June 2012
Phase 2 Visiting Fellowships awarded
Two Visiting Fellows will be joining CMPCP in the second phase of its fellowships programme. Dr Renee Timmers (University of Sheffield) will be attached to the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, where her research during four successive visits will be centred on developing a quantitative analysis of characteristics of performances recorded within the ‘Creative practice in contemporary concert music’ project. Dr Simon Zagorski-Thomas (London College of Music, University of West London) will be based for two months in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge, where he will work with the ‘Creative learning and “original” music performance’ team on performance in the recording studio, in addition to collaborating with colleagues at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Royal College of Music.

25 June 2012
Research-Recitals feature Guildhall and RCM students
Two lunchtime research-recitals will take place at the University of Cambridge on Friday 29 June and at Sidney Sussex College on Monday 2 July. The recitals are part of the CMPCP research project ‘Creative learning and “original” music performance’. A poster advertising the event is available here.

8 June 2012
Performance Studies Network Second International Conference 4-7 April 2013
The Performance Studies Network will hold its second international conference at the University of Cambridge from 4 to 7 April 2013. The main conference events will be held at the Faculty of Music and delegates will be accommodated at nearby Robinson College, where other events will also take place. A conference dinner will be held at St John’s College, and on 6 April a keynote workshop featuring performers from the Britten Sinfonia will take place, followed by a concert for conference delegates. The programme will also feature sessions curated by CMPCP project leaders. Click here for further information.

12 May 2012
Richard Goode: Piano masterclass featuring student pianists from the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge
The distinguished American pianist Richard Goode gave a masterclass for the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP) at the University of Cambridge on 12 May 2012 as part of the Faculty of Music’s ‘Practising Performance’ Series and in association with Cambridge Summer Recitals. The event was also supported by Cambridge Youth Music. During the masterclass Richard Goode worked with four pianists: Jâms Coleman (Chopin: Nocturnes Op. 9 No. 1 and Op. 15 No. 2), Ben Comeau (Chopin: Ballade Op. 52), Michael Leach (Beethoven: Sonata Op. 31 No. 2 ‘Tempest’), and Philippa Naylor (Chopin: Ballade in Op. 47). A poster advertising the event is available here.

10 May 2012
Booking opens for Perspectives on Musical Improvisation conference
Booking is now open for the Perspectives on Musical Improvisation conference, which will be held at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford from 10 to 13 September 2012. It is organised by CMPCP’s Creative Practice in Contemporary Concert Music project and enjoys the support of SEMPRE, IMR, BFE, SMA and RMA. For further information about the conference click here.

1 April 2012
Professor Stephen Cottrell joins CMPCP’s Steering Committee
Professor Stephen Cottrell has been appointed to the Steering Committee of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice. Professor Cottrell is Professor of Music and Head of the Department of Creative Practice & Enterprise at City University London. Regarding his appointment CMPCP’s Director Professor John Rink said: ‘The members of the Steering Committee and the Directorate are delighted that Stephen Cottrell will be joining us at our semiannual meetings. The unique insights, expertise and experience that he will offer us will greatly benefit CMPCP’s work as a whole.’

24 March 2012
CMPCP team contributes to Reflective Conservatoire Conference
CMPCP had a prominent role in the third Reflective Conservatoire Conference, held at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama from 17 to 20 March 2012. Professor John Rink helped to convene the ‘Research Performance’ strand, which featured special sessions led by three members of the CMPCP Directorate. Papers on the CMPCP projects were given by Helen Prior, Karen Wise, Mirjam James and Mats Küssner, whose presentation on how musicians and non-musicians visually shape sound received the SEMPRE Aubrey Hickman Award.

23 March 2012
PSN issue of Music Performance Research
A special issue of Music Performance Research was published in March 2012, featuring five papers presented at the first Performance Studies Network International Conference in July 2011. These include

Please click here to read John Rink’s Guest Editorial. The five members of the CMPCP Directorate served as Action Editors, and David Mawson provided editorial support and helped to prepare texts for final publication.

10 March 2012
CMPCP staff seminar
CMPCP held its second ‘staff seminar’ on 13 January 2012 at King’s College London. Attended by twelve members of the CMPCP team, the event commenced at 10.30 am with an introduction from CMPCP’s Director, Professor John Rink, followed by presentations on several of the research projects.

Mats Küssner and Dan Tidhar presented work on a 3D gesture experiment which aims at collecting participants’ bodily responses to various sound stimuli and musical excerpts. Following on from Mats’ first experiment on visual representations of sound in 2D, this experiment has two main goals:
i) comparing musicians’ and non-musicians’ 2D and 3D representations of basic characteristics of sound, and ii) creating a dataset of gestures together with their corresponding sound stimuli in order to inform an intuitive music visualisation software.

Mirjam James and John Rink summarised findings from the first phase of fieldwork, which involved a questionnaire given to all music students at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, focus-group discussions with teaching staff at the Guildhall School and the RCM, and an observational study of one-to-one lessons including video-recall interviews, all of which were conducted by Karen Wise and Mirjam James. In their presentation Mirjam and John also introduced the plans for their next phase of fieldwork, in which Karen and Mirjam will carry out a longitudinal study investigating aspects of practice and performance and the link between the two.

Myles Eastwood presented a synopsis of his doctoral research so far, focusing on the theoretical framework in which he plans to situate an upcoming ethnographic study. Drawing on existing typologies of listening (such as Adorno’s) he argued that valorising structural listening brackets out the expert modes of listening practised by record producers and engineers.

Michael Byrne used the staff seminar as a form of ‘candidate introduction’, illustrating how his academic and performance backgrounds in South Africa and England had shaped the research objectives of his PhD project, and how his work had developed during the course of the Michaelmas Term. Following his recent involvement in a study day at the Royal Ballet School, Michael described his interest in muscle-memory and music, noting his aim to investigate the body’s effectiveness in archiving ‘physical history’.

Mark Doffman presented an update on the Oxford project, consisting of an overview of the performer–composer case studies, a newly agreed project with the Royal College of Music and the first case study, i.e. a collaboration with Liza Lim and musikFabrik, which is currently in the early stages of being written up.

After a lunch break the staff engaged in open discussion about CMPCP’s work to date and plans for the next staff seminar.

6 March 2012
CMPCP PhD student awarded scholarship
Myles Eastwood has been awarded a scholarship by Pembroke College, Cambridge, to study at the University of California, Berkeley for six months starting in August 2012. Myles will be developing listening strategies that will underscore his CMPCP-funded PhD research on 1960s record production. His project will be overseen by Professor Richard Taruskin.

29 February 2012
CMPCP thanks Kerri French
Kerri French, who was appointed as CMPCP Coordinator from July 2009, has decided not to return to the Centre at the end of her maternity leave, which began in March 2011. The CMPCP team would like to express its gratitude to Kerri for her excellent work and in particular for the assistance that she provided to John Rink during CMPCP’s first eighteen months.

29 February 2012
Booking opens for Music and Shape conference
Booking is now open for the Music and Shape conference, which will be held at Senate House, University of London from 12 to 14 July 2012 and is organised by CMPCP in collaboration with the Institute of Musical Research. For further information about the conference please click here.

25 February 2012
New collaboration launched between CMPCP and C4DM
The AHRC has awarded a research grant for a project entitled ‘Measuring and enhancing expressive musical performance with digital instruments’. This will be carried out collaboratively between the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) at Queen Mary, University of London and CMPCP.

The project, which will involve researchers in electronic engineering, computer science and musical performance studies, will examine how electronically enhanced acoustic instruments can be used to build numerical models of expression in performance and, conversely, how musicians’ perspectives on performance can guide the design of new digital instruments. The five-month initiative will include a pilot study of expressive piano technique and an interdisciplinary research workshop to be held in June 2012 as part of the Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval conference at Queen Mary.

The project is led by Dr Andrew McPherson and Professor Elaine Chew of Queen Mary and Professor Daniel Leech-Wilkinson of King’s College London, with advisory input from other members of CMPCP and C4DM including Professor John Rink (Cambridge) and Dr Simon Dixon (QMUL). Funding for this collaborative research is provided by an AHRC Development Grant within the AHRC’s Digital Transformations in Arts and Humanities theme. The project will contribute to ongoing research activities in both CMPCP and C4DM and will identify areas for future collaboration.

26 January 2012
Arditti Quartet holds study day on Jonathan Harvey’s String Quartet No. 4
The Arditti Quartet held a study day at Jerwood Hall on 26 January 2012 focussing on Jonathan Harvey’s Fourth String Quartet. Professor Michael Clarke (University of Huddersfield) led the discussion together with Gilbert Noumo. The Study Day was promoted by IMR, Kingston University London, University of Huddersfield and the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice, in association with the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Total Immersion: Jonathan Harvey’.