Keynote @ LIPS 2018: London International Piano Symposium

Photo amongst pianists after Junior Van Cliburn winner Alim Beisembayev's stellar recital 28 Oct 2018 at the London International Piano Symposium at the Royal Academy of Music, London.  Left-to-right: Deborah Nemko (Bridgewater U), Christina Capparelli Gerling (UFRGS), Alim, Alim's teacher Tessa Nicholson (RAM), Elaine Chew (QMUL), Barbara Fast (OU), Cristine Mackie (LIPS). 

Cristine McKie does it again ... pulls off the third annual London International Piano Symposium, this time back at the Royal Academy of Music. The conference brought together pianists, pedagogues, and researchers from around the world. I immensely enjoyed the great company—all the laughter, good food, beautiful music—and carefully curated single-track series of interesting talks on all aspects of piano performance. Thank you, Cristine!

I gave the opening keynote lecture Saturday morning, From Sequence to Structure: Performance Decisions and Analytical Thinking. Photo on left shows the stage setup at the David Josefowitz Recital Hall. I was one of three keynote speakers at LIPS 2018, together with Jonathan Summers (Classical Music Curator at the British Library) and Georgia Volioti (Music Department, University of Sussex).

The hall had a brand new AV system, part of the renovations made possible by a £30M donation from Sainsbury's, and the lovely tech crew was still learning how to use it. Fully expecting to have to play all my music examples at the piano like at the PWL conference—part of the hazards of public speaking—I was saved by a mobile speaker unit, wheeled in just in time.

My glasses decide to fall apart while I was on stage delivering my lecture, so the final piano examples were played with the broken glasses perched precariously on my nose, with a missing earpiece. All I needed was slightly more frayed hair and a frumpy outfit to complete the professor look. On my way there.




London International Piano Symposium
Royal Academy of Music

PROGRAMME 2018


Saturday 27th October
David Josefowitz Recital Hall

Registration 8.30

9.0
Keynote Speaker
Prof Elaine Chew, Queen Mary, University of London
‘From Sequence to Structure: Performance Decisions and Analytical Thinking’.

The Brain
10.0. Barbara Fast: ‘Avoiding the ‘negativity bias’ in piano teaching’.
10.30 Tamara Wilcox: ‘Neuroscience: Linking the music, brain plasticity & motor development.

11.00 BREAK

11.30 Maria Herrojo Ruiz: ‘Brain-body interactions: Modulating perceptual, affective & cognitive processes’.

The Body in Piano Performance
12.0 Satu Paavola: ‘Bodily aspects of singing: Bel Canto breathing & sound production’
12.30 Deborah Nemko: ‘When offered the opportunity to 'fight or flight' - choose fight! A performance tool kit’

1.0 LUNCH

2.0 Christina Quilco: ‘Virtuosic minimalism without injury to the performer’
2.40 Zelia Cheke & Christina Capparelli Girling: ‘An ergonomic approach to piano performance & memory’

3.10 BREAK

3.40 Eugene Gaub: ‘Wave hands like clouds: Applying principles of Tai Chi at the piano’
4.10 Christina Kobb: ‘Improve your keyboard playing by applying the technique of 1820s Vienna’
4.50. Marta Torres del Rincon ‘Levinskaya, Matthay, Breithaupt, and E.J.Bach: Definitive techniques?’


Sunday 28th October
Angela Burgess Recital Hall

10.30-1.30. The Piano Forum: ‘Who Do You Think You Are’?
Film: Madame Sousatska

12.20 BREAK

12.40 Discussions with:
Prof John Sloboda, Psychologist, Guildhall Sch of Music & Drama; Murray McLachlan, Chair of EPTA; Cristine MacKie, author of Rethinking Piano Performance: The Mindful Body; Dr Sam Thompson, Clinical Psychologist, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust

1.30 BREAK

Pedagogy, Tradition & the Music
2.30 Gabriel Mayer: ‘Rhetorical influences: Mozart to Liszt’'.
3.0 Cheryl Wenn Min Tan: ‘Purely pedagogical stances? Rethinking Mozart's keyboard sonatas.

3.30 BREAK

4.0 Eumni Ko: ‘The Orchard Project: A new learning experience’.
4.30 Sarah Stranger: ‘Piano versus harpsichord: Can one inform the other?

Issues on and about early recordings
5.10 Inja Stanovic: ’Early recordings as a source of ‘flow’ in piano performance’

6.0- 7.0 Piano Recital
Alim Beisembayev, winner of the junior Van Cliburn Competition


Monday 29th October
Pushkin House 5A, Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1A 2TA, Holborn St.

9.0
Keynote Speaker
Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Recordings. (Sound & Vision Collections Division, British Library).

10.0
Keynote Speaker
Dr Georgia Volioti, Music Department, University of Sussex.
'Reflections on Classical Sound Recordings: Prospects and Challenges for Performance Studies'

The Digitalisation of Piano Rolls
10.45 Carolina Estrada Bascunana: ‘Historical performance practice of Spanish piano music’

11.15 BREAK

11.45 Mengjliao Yan: ‘Stravinsky's recordings: A vital source for interpreting his piano works' to 'How performers can approach the piano work of Stravinsky: interpretation and approaches to his three distinct periods piano works’

Nationalism
12.15 Anna Michels: ‘An Interpretational Journey- Ronald Center Piano Sonata as case study’

BREAK

Futurism
2.0 Andrés Felipe Molano Ruiz: ‘After the traits of the piano futurists of the early twentieth century’

Performing Styles
2.30 Xuefeng Zhou & Tian Hoa: ‘The performing “principle” of timbre of phrase accents’

3.0 BREAK

3.30 Tihamer Hlavacsek: ‘The undiscovered Goldmark 1830- 1915’
4.10 Lise Meling: ‘The piano: A gendered Instrument?’
4.40 Stephen Hussarik: ‘Pedal registrations: Resurrecting the drama in Beethoven’s Arietta from Opus 111’

7.30 CONFERENCE DINNER
La Ferme, 102-104 Farringdon Rd, London EC1R 3EA