Research seminar archive

This is an archive of research seminars and other events that have already taken place.

Elizabeth Llewellyn. Black Womxn in the Performing and Digital Arts. 26 February 2021 5pm GMT (6pm CET, 12pm EST, 9am PST) Royal Holloway, University of London
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London-born soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and the National Opera Studio, supported by the Peter Moores Foundation. After completing the ENO Opera Works training programme, she created the role of Ludovina in the premiere of Glyndebourne Festival’s new opera The Yellow Sofa.

Elizabeth made her operatic debut as Mimì in Jonathan Miller’s production of La Bohème at the English National Opera, which led to her being named as “Best newcomer in opera in 2010” by The Telegraph. She returned to the ENO the following year, stepping-in on opening night as the Countess in their new production of The Marriage of Figaro, directed by Fiona Shaw; a role which earned her uniformly glowing reviews.

Elizabeth begins the 2020/21 season with her company debut with Scottish Opera, singing Mimì in a socially distanced outdoor production of La Bohème - one of the first operas to be staged in the UK following the Covid-19 crisis. She also sings Mozart Requiem at the London Coliseum for English National Opera’s first live indoor performance since lockdown, and will return to ENO to make her debut in the role of Ellen Orford Peter Grimes. Later this season Elizabeth releases her debut solo album Songs of the Heart and Hereafter, alongside pianist Simon Lepper, focusing on the work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his contemporaries. Prior to the release, Elizabeth will perform the programme in recitals at Snape Maltings in Aldeburgh and for her Wigmore Hall debut, broadcast online and on BBC Radio 3 live in-concert. Further performances this season include ‘Easter Hymn’ from Cavalleria Rusticana with Opera North in a live broadcast from Leeds Town Hall, and Bess Porgy & Bess in a semi-staged production at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

In 2018 Elizabeth made her US debut with Seattle Opera as Bess in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, a role that she went to sing in her house debut at the Metropolitan Opera last season. In more recent years, Elizabeth has established herself as a notable lyrico spinto soprano, singing the title roles in Verdi’s Luisa Miller for English National Opera, Aida at the Theater Bielefeld, Manon Lescaut with Opera Holland Park, as well as Puccini’s Tosca and the role of Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin, both at the Theater Magdeburg, Germany. Elizabeth was also nominated for “Singer of the Year 2013” in OpernWelt magazine for her portrayal of Amelia Grimaldi in Simon Boccangera; a role she later performed with Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra. Elizabeth also sang the title role of Suor Angelica and Giorgetta Il Tabarro for the Royal Danish Opera, and returned there to make her acclaimed debut in the title role of Madama Butterfly. Other roles include Margherita/Elena in Boito’s Mefistofele with Chelsea Opera Group. Magda de Civry La Rondine (Opera Holland Park); Fiordiligi Così fan tutte (Theater Magdeburg; Opera Holland Park), Contessa Le Nozze di Figaro (ENO; Opera Holland Park); Governess The Turn of the Screw (Arcola Theatre); Donna Elvira Don Giovanni (Theater Magdeburg; Bergen National Opera); Bess Porgy and Bess (Royal Danish Opera); title role in The Merry Widow (Cape Town Opera) and the title role in The Iris Murder (Hebrides Ensemble).

Elizabeth’s concert appearances have included Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Richard Farnes, a Rosenblatt Recital, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Esa-Pekka Salonen, Verdi Requiem, Britten War Requiem, Tippett A Child of Our Time with Ryan Wigglesworth, a Gala Concert with Joseph Calleja recorded for Classic FM, and a live performance of Strauss Vier Letzte Lieder on BBC Radio 3 with Donald Runnicles/BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Recently, Elizabeth has recorded Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony with BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Eigen in Elgar’s Caractacus for Hyperion, both under the baton of Martyn Brabbins. Elizabeth won the inaugural Voice of Black Opera Competition / Sir Willard White Award in 2009, and she was the opera nominee for the prestigious Breakthrough Award at the 2013 Times/Sky Arts Southbank Awards.

John Rink (University of Cambridge). The Evaluation of Musical Experience. 2 March 2021 4pm GMT (5pm CET, 11am EST, 8am PST) Royal Holloway, University of London
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John Rink is Professor of Musical Performance Studies in the Cambridge Faculty of Music, and Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at St John's College. He studied at Princeton University, King's College London, and the University of Cambridge, where his doctoral research was on the evolution of tonal structure in Chopin's early music and its relation to improvisation. He also holds the Concert Recital Diploma and Premier Prix in piano from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He specialises in the fields of performance studies, theory and analysis, and 19th-century studies, and has published six books with Cambridge University Press, including The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation (1995), Chopin: The Piano Concertos (1997), Musical Performance: A Guide to Understanding (2002), and Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions (with Christophe Grabowski; 2010). He is a co-editor of Chopin Studies 2 (with Jim Samson; 2004) and the Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music (with Nicholas Cook, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and Eric Clarke; 2009); he is also General Editor of the five-book series Studies in Musical Performance as Creative Practice, which Oxford University Press published in 2017/18. He co-edited one of the books - Musicians in the Making: Pathways to Creative Performance - in collaboration with Helena Gaunt and Aaron Williamon.

He was an Associate Director of the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM), and he chaired the Steering Committees of the AHRC's 'Beyond Text' and 'Landscape and Environment' Strategic Programmes; he also served on the AHRC's Advisory Board and chaired the Science in Culture Advisory Group. He sits on the editorial board of Music and Letters and Musicologist; is on the Advisory Panels of Music Analysis, the Institute of Musical Research, and several UK research projects; and has been a member of the AHRC's Peer Review College. He holds several honorary appointments, including Visiting Professor in the Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London; Guest Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music; Visiting Professor in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London; and Guest Professor, Shanghai Normal University. In 2012/13 he was Ong Teng Cheong Visiting Professor in Music at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore.

He was a member of the jury of the XVII International Chopin Competition held in October 2015 in Warsaw, and he will serve again on the jury for the XVIII Chopin Competition in October 2020. In 2017 he was invited to join the Society for Musicology in Ireland as a Corresponding Member, and he also became the inaugural Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities, holding this role for two years.

This is a live, interactive session which will be hosted on an online video conferencing platform. To join us, please complete this short form (link embedded). Access details for the session will be emailed to you on the day of the event.

== Aistė Vaitkevičiūtė. Emerging in the Process: Alternative Musical Thinking Recalling Archaic (Female) Existence. 4 March 4pm GMT (5pm CET, 11am EST, 8am PST) Fragility of Sound - KUG University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria ==

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There has already been a long debate concerning the inhibited role of women regarding the development of Western music tradition. While men are usually being granted for creating the great opuses, grounding the basic rules as well as reasoning theoretical fundaments of the art of sounds, female musical practices are often confined to accessory role, i.e., accompanying other activities (e.g., as an element of courteous manner, a part of a ritual or exhilarating a process of work.). This specific area is, however, worth of special attention and is undeservedly left in the periphery of many researchers construing the framework of music history. Notwithstanding, uncovering the so far obscure field may reveal alternative approaches from both extrinsic (socio-cultural context) as well as intrinsic (structural aspects of music) perspectives.

This particular domain may be represented by numerous archaic musical practices throughout the different cultures (Balkan, Slavic, Ainu, Baltic, etc.) which mainly served as accompanying activities to the female daily works. A unique manifestation (among others) may also be detected in the archaic Lithuanian folk genre called sutartinės integrating features of particular activity through many different levels. The monotonous character based on canonical repetition of narrow musical formulas, polyphonic intertwining between two voices resulting in constant recurrence of a second interval, a specific tuning inducing a psycho-acoustic effect of maximum roughness (also called Schwebungsdiaphonie) as well as onomatopoeic nature of meaningless—all these elements somehow reflect the overall nature of the activities women were commonly engaged in (processing linen, cutting rye, grinding grain, etc.). Paradoxically, these ancient forms of musical practice are somehow recalled in the most recent manifestations of music. Some Lithuanian female composers (such as Justė Janulytė, Ugnė Giedraitytė, Justina Repečkaitė) convey the features of monotonous processes into their own musical material, thus distancing themselves from the established standards of a Western musical work-opus. In this paper-presentation, this paradoxical link is inquired while analysing and comparing aspects of musical development, rhythmic and pitch structure, sound effects as well as references beyond the musical domain in both archaic and contemporary instances. The significance of female contribution into the Western musical tradition is exposed which can find its revitalisation in nowadays composing arena.

Aistė Vaitkevičiūtė is a Lithuanian composer and a researcher of a young generation. She got her master degree in composition and music pedagogy at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre and she is working on her doctoral thesis at the moment there. The focus of her research is timbre and its function in compositional practice of the second half of the 20th–21st centuries. She is also one of the coordinators of the annual conference Principles of Music Composing (2018–2020, Vilnius) as well as an assistant co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal following the conference (2016–2020). Aistė Vaitkevičiūtė’s interests encompass such fields as cultural and mentality studies or philosophy in relation to musical field. She also got a bachelor’s degree in Cultural History and Anthropology at Vilnius University.

== Sarah Weiss. Precarious Resistance: On Women Singing Transgression in Ritual Contexts. 4 March 4pm GMT (5pm CET, 11am EST, 8am PST) Fragility of Sound - KUG University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria ==

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In some cultural contexts, even in those that are most restrictive and closed, women can be observed to exploit the ambiguity generated by performance in ritual contexts – whether weddings, funerals, or the fulfillment of personal vows – to express their opinions or to do things they would not normally be allowed to do. Through lamentation, mockery, or the embodied defiance of normative behaviors, women performers generate (an ephemeral) agency for themselves through the articulation and mastery of their emotions in and through their performance. Using case studies from India, Greece, Iran, and Italy, in this presentation I will suggest that expressing these kinds of transgressive sentiments through the performance of music and dance ameliorates the disturbances that might otherwise be caused by the articulation of such words and actions alone. Different from performances for entertainment in these same cultures, the music and dance in these ritually sanctioned contexts shield women from the opprobrium that might normally be heaped on them for expressing themselves in public, visible not only to women but also to men. The protection occurs precisely because the performative moments are temporary and contained by the liminality of the cultural moment. In these contexts, the limited nature of the performative moment actually provides additional freedom for the performers to communicate much more than they would normally be allowed to do in daily life. Any ambiguities about their character or propriety that might otherwise be generated by their performing music and dance on stage or in public, without the shepherding presence of their male family members, are, ironically, ameliorated by the performance itself. The fragility of this kind of performed agency is precisely what makes it powerful.

Privatdozentin Dr. Sarah Weiss (PhD, MA – New York University, BA – University of Rochester/ Eastman School of Music) is a scholar working in Southeast Asian cultures and performance, gender studies, postcoloniality, and hybridity studies. She has recently (2018) finished a term as Associate Professor in the Humanities and Inaugural Rector of Saga Residential College at Yale-NUS College, a new liberal arts and sciences college in Singapore. She joined the Institute for Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz as a senior faculty member and researcher in March 2018. She completed her habilitation in January 2019 with a new book entitled, Ritual Soundings: Women Performers and World Religions published in 2019 by the University of Illinois Press in their New Perspectives on Gender and Music Series. Her earlier and continuing research focuses on the cultural and musical analysis of Javanese gamelan performance, in particular old-style wayang. She has been leading Javanese Gamelan Nyai Rara Saraswati at Kunstuniversität Graz since September 2018.