Musical performance is a research field that is gathering great momentum in recent years. You will find in this page information about five upcoming conferences on performance. The two last conferences have a call for papers. By the way, I attend the CHARM conference and give a paper at the conference on Adorno.

(1) CHARM Symposium 6: Playing with recordings

Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, 11-13 September 2008

How do musicians use recordings and what has been their impact? In this final CHARM symposium we explore the attitudes towards recordings of performers and teachers, along with the ways in which recordings contribute to both the maintenance of musical culture and processes of style change. Do recordings prompt or inhibit style change? Have they resulted in stylistic convergence, as is often claimed? And what is the relationship between such processes and the technological or business history of recording? Might technology and business practices be seen as the principal drivers of performance style in the age of recordings? In addressing the interface between recordings and the professional practice of performance, the symposium will prepare the transition to CHARM’s successor centre from April 2009, the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice.

PROGRAMME

The symposium will run from lunchtime on Thursday 11th through to lunchtime on Saturday 13th September. Speakers and panellists will include John Carewe, Mine Dogantan-Dack, Martin Elste, Anthony Gritten, Pekka Gronow, Peter Martland, Nick Morgan, Ian Partridge, David Patmore, and Jeremy Summerly. Further scheduling details and abstracts will be posted online very shortly.

(2) “Formulate with the greatest care”: Adorno and Performance

13-14 September 2008
Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK

A conference based around readings of Adorno’s Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction (TTMR) and its contexts, interpretations, and uses.

(3) Minimalism, Post-Opera, and Performance

GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
MINIMALISM, POST-OPERA AND PERFORMANCE
SATURDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2008
10.00 - 5.00

A one-day colloquium organised in association with the Society for
Minimalist Music

(4) The Musical Body: Gesture, Representation and Ergonomics in Performance – call for papers!

The Musical Body: Gesture, Representation and Ergonomics in Performance

Institute of Musical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London, in
association with the Open University, the University of Durham and the
Orpheus Instituut, Gent, the University of Sussex, the Royal College of
Music and the IMR Music & Science group

22-24 April 2009

The aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring together
researchers from widely divergent fields to share perspectives on the
physicality of performance, and its visual representation, in musics of
all kinds. From connections between musical performance and health, and
musical performance as dance, to representations of the ‘ideal’ posture
in historical treatises and the lampooning of soloists in caricature,
the conference will explore the ways in which music and the body
interact, both with ease (such as where composition or improvisation are
explicitly ergonomic) and in tension (where physical strain is etched
into a musical composition or acts as a marker of authenticity in a
performance style). Finally, it is pertinent to consider those areas in
which physical ease in performance is either obstructed (eg. via
performance anxiety) or results from the creative adaptation of standard
practices (eg. as a response to disability).

Sessions will be built around themes, with presentations grouped as far
as possible in ways that bring together a variety of historical and
generic areas of study. The following list of themes and topics is
indicative only:

· Music and health
· Iconographical representation
· History of performance style
· Organology
· The boundaries of the idiomatic and the ergonomic in composition
· Entrainment, ensembles and community
· Gesture and embodied cognition
· Stage presence and performance anxiety

A Call for Papers and Lecture-recitals will be issued in the early autumn.

Programme committee:

Katharine Ellis (IMR)
Martin Clayton (Open University)
Mieko Kanno (Durham University; Orpheus Instituut, Gent)
Nicholas Till (University of Sussex)
Aaron Williamon (Royal College of Music; IMR Music & Science group)

(5) The Performer’s Voice: An International Forum for Music Performance & Scholarship – call for papers!

29 October – 2 November 2009

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore 

Symposium Partners:

Peabody Institute, John Hopkins University
Royal Northern College of Music 

The Performer’s Voice aims to stimulate discussion, develop ideas, and disseminate research on music performance from a range of angles. Though interdisciplinary in scope the symposium’s distinct focus derives from an uncompromising emphasis on the act of performance, the role of the performer, and the professional performer’s perspective. The program will feature plenary and parallel sessions of lecture-recitals, papers with live or recorded performance, open rehearsals, panel discussions, and workshops.  

Keynote Speaker:

Prof. Richard Taruskin (University of California, Berkeley)

Guest Panelist, ‘Asian Voices’:

Prof. Kishore Mahbubani (National University of Singapore)

Plenary Presenters:

Prof. John Rink (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Dr. Elisabeth Le Guin (University of California, Los Angeles)
Dr. Stephen Emmerson (Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University)
Dr. Helena Gaunt (Guildhall School of Music and Drama)
Dr. Aiyun Huang (McGill University)
Dr. Thomas Hecht (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music) 
Qian Zhou (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music)
Qin Li Wei (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music)  

Call for presentations & more information available at: www.performersvoice.org

Symposium Convener: Dr. Anne Marshman

Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it