Conference details: ‘When Music Comes to Mind: Embodying the Performer’

 

WHEN MUSIC COMES TO MIND:

 EMBODYING THE PERFORMER

 

We are delighted to announce that the London International Piano Symposium will hold a one-day symposium hosted by the Royal College of Music on the 25th October 2025. And, we are honoured also, to have Prof. Alison McGregor from Imperial College, University of London as our keynote speaker.

The objective of this symposium entitled ‘When Music Comes to Mind: Embodying the Performer,’ is to encourage a transformational way of thinking that will  dispel the concept of the mind/body dualism modus operandi ― which has been, and continues to be, the most trenchant and resistant problem within musical education ― by inviting researchers  from the musical, medical, and  scientific  communities, to contribute papers that show that performance is not just a process of the mind, but may  be shaped also  by the body; crucially, by the somatosensory system: a term that describes the sensing of the soma, or body, with its combination of several subsystems, i.e. the visual, the visceral, the vestibular, the muscular-skeletal and fine-touch divisions, each of which conveys signals to the brain about the state of very different aspects of the performer’s body during learning and performing the music.

 

We hope also, to  collate and disseminate the findings to wider audiences ― such as conservatoires and institutes of higher musical education ― with the aim of encouraging them to consider introducing changes to their curriculum, so that both pedagogues and their students may come to realise that adopting an embodied approach to performance will not only enhance their musical skills, but will also improve their health, wellbeing and satisfaction.

 

Suggested topics  will be welcomed, but not confined to:

  1. The historical reasons for the separation of the mind/body in musical education
  2. Neuroscientific evidence on the ‘brain to body loop’.
  3. Biomechanics ― muscular skeletal issues concerning the performer’s body.
  4. Biofeedback for neuromuscular re-education.
  5. Moved by emotions: the auditory factor.

6.The state of embodied learning in musical education.

 

For more details go to:

www.londoninternationalpianosymposium.co.uk;

 

Cristine MacKie

Director

c.mackie@londoninternationalpianosymposium.co.uk

www.pianoperformance.co.uk