Alchemy in the Spotlight: Qualitative Transformations in Chamber Music Performance

The Alchemy project concerns investigating the cognitive and affective processes involved in performing live in public in the context of a professional piano trio, which has been specifically established for this project (the Marmara trio: Mine Dogantan-Dack, piano; Pal Banda, cello; Philippa Mo, violin). One of the aims of the project is to identify and explore the qualitative transformations performers experience during live performance. The term 'transformations' is used to indicate certain processes that are peculiar to live performance contexts as distinct from the processes involved in rehearsals and practice sessions. During a live performance, the cognitive/affective world of the performers and consequently the interpretation of the music they perform often undergo certain qualitative transformations. These transformations are related to such phenomena as increasing expressive freedom, increasing affective involvement, unplanned creative interpretative choices, and certain alterations in time-consciousness. The Alchemy project will explore the conditions of emergence of such transformations in the context of a professional piano trio preparing and performing selected works from the Classical, Romantic and Contemporary repertoire; it will compare and contrast the processes that take place in rehearsals/practice sessions with those that unfold during a live performance. It will also examine the broader issue of the acquisition of new insights and knowledge during live music performance by identifying how performers continue to learn on stage about the music they perform. One further aim is to identify the conditions under which live performance becomes a site for positive affective experiences. Workshops and public concerts will be organised and documented for subsequent analysis. The results will be disseminated in part through the public performances and in part through national and international conferences, journal articles and a website.