I am delighted to be returning to my alma mater 11-12 May 2018 to give a talk and concert at the Music and the Brain Symposium hosted by the Music Engagement Research Initiative at the Stanford Centre for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. The theme of this year's symposium is music performance and expressivity, and the symposium organisers are Jonathan Berger, Noah Fram, Blair Kaneshiro, Zhengshan Shi, and Nette Worthey.
The event is free but registration is required on eventbrite. There is live streaming of the two-day event: [ Day 1 | Day 2 ]. The abstract of my talk and concert program are reproduced below; the concert's program notes are on this blogpost; full program can be found on the event website.
Photos (below): Here I am stealing some time to practice and put the finishing touches on the Arrhythmia Suite for the CCRMA concert while at the Symposium Risset at Ircam in Paris yesterday. John Chowning, inventor of FM synthesis, founder of CCRMA, and close friend of Jean-Claude Risset gave a keynote.
 | Stanford: CCRMA: Music and the Brain SymposiumMay 11–12, 2018CCRMA (The Knoll), 660 Lomita Drive, Stanford University [directions] [map] [register] Sponsored by the Scott and Annette Turow Fund |
4PM, May 12, 2018
Music performance as problem solving
Elaine Chew — Queen Mary University of London
Music performance, with its on-the-fly decision-making, is considered to be one of the most breathtaking feats of human intelligence. The nature of the creativity in music performance, the reasoning behind the interpretations of a piece of music, and the work performers do to create novel and moving experiences, however, largely remain a mystery. This is partly because there is little in the way of representing, conceptualizing, and talking about the work of performance. Re-framing performance as an act of problem solving, I shall show different ways to represent and conceptualize alternate solutions (interpretations) created in performance; these representations provide concrete measures of the extent to which a performer deforms musical space and time. The techniques will be shown to apply also to electrocardiographic recordings of abnormal heartbeats. Finally, I will propose a theoretical framework for reverse-engineering the thinking behind a performance.
8PM, May 11, 2018
Transformations
Elaine Chew — Piano
| Sonata in E-flat, Hob XVI:45, Finale | Franz Josef Haydn |
| Stolen Rhythm (2009) | Cheryl Frances-Hoad/Franz Josef Haydn |
| Practicing Haydn (2013) | Elaine Chew, Peter Child, Lina Viste Grønli |
| Intermezzo — for Pedja (2015) | Jonathan Berger |
| Three morphed pieces from J.S. Bach's "A Little Notebook for Anna Magdalena" (2016) Minuet in G – March in D – Bist du bei mir | Dorien Herremans, Elaine Chew US première |
| Three morphed pieces from Kabalevsky's "30 and 24 Pieces for Children" (2006) Clowns – Toccatina – Etude No. 3 in A minor | Dorien Herremans, Elaine Chew US première |
| Arrythmia Suite (2017-2018)* I. 161122 VT before during after ECG (after Holst's Mars from The Planets) II. 161102 VT4 before after UNI (after Chopin's Ballade No. 2) | Elaine Chew, Ashwin Krishna, Daniel Soberanes, Matthew Ybarra, Michele Orini, Pier Lambiase World première |
| Ballade No. 2 in F major | Frédéric Chopin |
Program Notes