Collaboration

CHARM benefited from informal collaborative relationships with numerous national and international research partners (including Queen Mary, University of London; Goldsmiths, University of London; IRCAM; and University of New South Wales). CMPCP is building on these links. Its research projects are designed to involve UK-based institutions in formal collaborations, with John Rink's research centred on two major London conservatoires (Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Royal College of Music) and Eric Clarke's Oxford-based project embracing a number of associated universities with particular strengths in composition and performance; these links directly involve a large number of UK-based performance researchers in CMPCP's work. In addition, Nicholas Cook's research and the Centre's doctoral students are either developing or extending existing contacts with relevant resource centres such as British Library Sound Archive, Music Preserved and Gus Dudgeon Foundation. CMPCP is also attempting to unite research effort that has typically been fragmented across different institutions and disciplines: that is why its projects include workshops linked in turn to the Performance Studies Network, enabling interested individuals (from within higher education institutions as well as outside them) to contribute to a widely owned research agenda and ensuring dissemination of outputs through conferences. In short, CMPCP's projects are intended as one element within a broad enhancement of research capacity in musical performance across and beyond the UK. The programme of Visiting Fellowships adds to this by enabling individuals to become intensively connected with CMPCP's research during defined periods, representing a means of engaging with others on an international basis. The Centre also benefits from the input of designated CMPCP Associates, who are based in institutions outside the formal partnership but who provide high-level input to the Centre's research programme on an ongoing basis.

Some of the most important collaborative activity being undertaken by CMPCP is with performing musicians. Indeed, the participation of performers at all levels of expertise, and across a wide variety of musical traditions, is vital to CMPCP's work. Not only do all of the research projects rely upon the direct involvement of performers (whether ensemble musicians, as in Eric Clarke's and Tina K. Ramnarine's research, or solo performers, as in Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's and John Rink's projects), but musicians also play a central, essential role in the Performance Studies Network, in project workshops, in the CMPCP conferences, and in other areas of the Centre's research programme. CMPCP also thrives upon the advice of and close interaction with leading groups such as the three ensembles-in-residence at the University of Cambridge, i.e. the Britten Sinfonia, the Endellion Quartet, and the Academy of Ancient Music, as well as others beyond Cambridge itself. By way of example, interaction of this sort is taking the form of the observation of rehearsals to determine how decision-making takes place in ensemble contexts (work being done by one of John Rink's PhD students, in parallel to the similarly conceived study that Tina K. Ramnarine is pursuing). There has also been the opportunity to develop teaching and workshop opportunities featuring leading players from these and other groups. CMPCP is in dialogue with the Barbican Centre, London Symphony Orchestra, Centre for Orchestra, National Gallery, Institute of Musical Research and other organisations with a view to running study days, open rehearsals, lecture series and other public events, all of which will focus on and involve the participation of performing musicians. The Centre also has a roster of Affiliate Artists, including Alfred Brendel, Simon Channing, Margaret Faultless, Christopher Hogwood, Janis Kelly, Helen Reid, Susan Tomes, and the four members of the Endellion Quartet – Andrew Watkinson, Ralph de Souza, Garfield Jackson and David Waterman.

Thus, performance lies at the very heart not only of CMPCP's name but, more significantly, of its research agenda and all the activity emerging from it.