Examples of the workshops, February 2013
Posted by Cristine on Apr 13, 2014 in Event News | 0 comments
Full conference programme provided under News and Events
Britten Theatre RCM
Background
Performance science has grown considerably during the last ten years. But despite the potential for this field to inform educational and professional practice across the arts, its application in the field of piano performance has been largely neglected. This neglect is not surprising, since the area is steeped in traditional methods of performance practice, and suffers also from a mind/body dualism. These workshops will suggest that skilled pianism cannot be achieved exclusively by pursuing the traditional route, in which the student and the teacher sit side by side throughout the piano lesson. It may be better achieved by including some collaboration with other disciplines such as operative surgery, dance, neuroscience and musical analysis.
1st Workshop The Keyboard and the Scalpel
2nd Workshop. Mirror Neurons:imitation & emulation in piano performance
In 2004, Rizzolatti writes ‘every time an individual observes an action performed by another individual, neurons that represent that action are activated in the premotor cortex. The observer ‘‘understands’’ someone else’s actions because the evoked motor representation corresponds to that generated internally during action execution’. This research amongst others, Craighero et al (2007), (Haggard (2008), and Iacoboni (2008), Ramchanderan (2011), will be drawn upon, because it may underpin the approach taken in this workshop in which a music analyst, a choreographer and dancer from the Royal Ballet will collaborate in assisting the pianist to develop a greater control of the pacing of the ebb and flow of Clair de lune through imitation and emulation of the dancer’s movements.
A short piano recital will be given by the Russian pianist, Sofya Gulyak, the first, and only woman to win the Leeds international Piano Competition.
