[ANPPOM-L] Royal Holloway to orchestrate new £2m research centre on musical performance

[carlos palombini]

Apologies for cross posting
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*** Royal Holloway to orchestrate new £2m research centre on musical performance ***

The internationally renowned Music Department at Royal Holloway, University of London has been awarded major funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to establish the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice. It will be launched in April 2009 as a successor to the existing AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM). The new Centre will pursue a vigorous and ambitious research programme over the following five years. Its total budget will be approximately £2.2 million, with an AHRC grant of over £1.7 million and contributions of c. £430,000 from the three participating institutions - Royal Holloway, King's College London, and the University of Sheffield.

The innovative research programme will focus on live musical performance and creative music-making. Five flagship research projects with associated workshop packages will be undertaken, and an international Performance Studies Network will foster unprecedented intellectual exchange and collaborative research. Once launched, the Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice will award Visiting Fellowships to scholars and musicians working in performance studies around the world, while also providing a host of outreach and knowledge transfer opportunities closer to home. In addition the AHRC will fund two doctoral studentships at Royal Holloway which will be directly affiliated to the Centre.

The project team will address such questions as:

*	how is musical performance creative, and what knowledge is creatively embodied in musical performance?
*	how does music in performance - and indeed the very act of performance - take shape over time? and
*	how does understanding musical performance as a creative practice vary across different global contexts, idioms and performance conditions (such as solo and ensemble, in the rehearsal room, recording studio and concert hall)? 

The Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice will be directed by Professor John Rink from Royal Holloway, a specialist in the history, theory and performance practice of 19th-century music, as well as an active pianist. The directorate will also include Professor Nicholas Cook (currently Director of CHARM at Royal Holloway), Professor Daniel Leech-Wilkinson from King's College London, Professor Eric Clarke from the University of Sheffield, and Dr Tina K. Ramnarine from Royal Holloway. 

Professor Rink comments: "Our new research centre will aspire to a leading international role in performance studies. It will also be inclusive, opening its doors to those in academe and to amateur and professional musicians working in a wide range of musical traditions. The Centre's directorate will ensure a high degree of public engagement while seeking to develop a more vital understanding of musical performance and its fundamental place within musicology and culture more generally."

http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Resources/Helper_apps/Message.asp?ref_no=399



Carol Chan
Research Centre Co-ordinator, AHRC CHARM
Tel: (01784) 443361
Fax: (01784) 439441
www.charm.rhul.ac.uk

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cp