This year’s RMA Research Students’ Conference was held in the Music Department at the University of Bristol from Thursday 8th to Saturday 10th January 2015 and there was a good representation of City students and staff presenting papers.
DMA student Annie Yim presented her practice-based research on ‘Regaining a Lost Performing Tradition: The Schumann Circle and the Young Brahms’s Piano Trio Op. 8a’, including live demonstration at the piano. Another pianist and DMA student, Sasha Karpeyev, gave a paper on the Edna Iles’ ‘Medtner Collection’ at the British Library, and talked about the value of this collection and its implications for Medtner performance practice.
Two PhD students also presented papers: in ‘”Yellow Bird” and Pan: Caribbean Musical Migrations’, Rachel Hayward gave a summary of her research plotting the migration routes of the ‘Choucoune’ song family from 1957 to the present day; and Sam MacKay presented a paper entitled ‘A Shared history? North African Musical Heritage and the Public Sphere in Contemporary Marseille’.
As well as the research students, Laudan Nooshin was at the conference in her new capacity as RMA Council member. She participated in a roundtable panel on the topic of ‘Perspectives on Analysing Music and Sound’ along with other panel members: Rachel Beckles Willson (Royal Holloway), Emma Hornby (University of Bristol), Bettina Varwig (Kings College, London) and Warwick Edwards (University of Glasgow).
All of the presentations were well received and generated enthusiastic comments and questions from the audience.
Further information on the Royal Musical Association and the conference:
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/gradschool/pg-activity/conferences/rma