York - Birmingham Contemporary Music Group - Identifying, systematising, executing, and communicating core skills in contemporary music performance

New music performance training is currently a 'closed shop'. It produces highly capable performers but excludes students without means, and remains largely opaque to academic enquiry. This project will open access to such training by constructing and evaluating a workbook that will teach core skills and allow academic study of their interaction. The CDA allows this project to draw on the real-world expertise of leading performers-thus differing from the composerly, top-down approach of earlier educators like Hindemith. The outcome will be both a tool for practical use and a means for understanding how core skills are acquired and used.