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How can musicians make music with people with dementia?: an investigation of musician-led musical practices for those living with dementia
Get PDFRecent studies demonstrate that music can significantly contribute to improving the overall quality of life of people living with dementia. However, precise information regarding the how to practically use music in order to successfully achieve its benefits is scarce.
This project’s main research question explores what and how music practices can be employed in music workshops for people with dementia. Four related questions are studied: (1) why song-writing is the focus of Turtle Song and what makes it a powerful practice; (2) what skill-set musicians should have to work in this field; (3) whether workshops should focus on a single music practice or a broad variety of them; and (4) how experiencing a project like Turtle Song impacts young musicians. All this was explored through participation in Turtle Song - a music project for people with dementia.
Conclusions are supported by empirical data collected during Turtle Song: a session diary (supported by observation and audio-recordings) and interviews with the musicians involved. Key findings are that (1) song-writing can be extremely beneficial for people with dementia as it is a very complete activity - involving brainstorming, recalling memories, discussing lyrics, singing - therefore activating several cognitive and non-cognitive skills; (2) human skills such as compassion and attentiveness are crucial to work in this field but skills such as leadership and adaptability are also fundamental; (3) variety of music practices allows diversity and enjoyment but having a general structure can provide an important sense of familiarity; (4) directly experiencing music workshops for dementia can significantly increase musicians’ interest and confidence to successfully lead workshops.
This work culminates in a guide-like model of a workshop session. The guide describes how to employ specific music practices in that context, being a valuable tool for musicians interested in successfully engaging with people living with dementia
Being a healthy musician
Get PDFWhat does it mean to be a heathy musician? Here, Dr George Waddell from the Centre for Performance Science breaks down what taking care of our physical and mental health looks like in practice
Il talento del calabrone
No full textOriginal soundtrack for the film 'Il Talento del Calabrone' (2020) directed by Giacomo Cimini and starring Sergio Castellitto, Lorenzo Richelmy, Anna Foglietta and Marina Occhionero. The first three of 18 tracks available on YouTube are below - please go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lYN_dFCdY8&list=OLAK5uy_lFCxGMb_dowfIlYMcJZB3Z0H8Ym-0GE18&index=1 for the remainder. See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiIuoWC6vts for a live recording of music from this film by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra
Group singing as a resource for the development of a healthy public: a study of adult group singing
Get PDFA growing body of evidence points to a wide range of benefits arising from participation in group singing. Group singing requires participants to engage with each other in a simultaneous musical dialogue in a pluralistic and emergent context, creating a coherent cultural expression through the reflexive negotiation of (musical) meaning manifest in the collective power of the human voice. As such, group singing might be taken—both literally and figuratively—as a potent form of ‘healthy public’, creating an ‘ideal’ community, which participants can subsequently mobilise as a positive resource for everyday life. The experiences of a group of singers (n = 78) who had participated in an outdoor singing project were collected and analysed using a three-layer research design consisting of: distributed data generation and interpretation, considered against comparative data from other singing groups (n = 88); a focus group workshop (n = 11); an unstructured interview (n = 2). The study confirmed an expected perception of the social bonding effect of group singing, highlighting affordances for interpersonal attunement and attachment alongside a powerful individual sense of feeling ‘uplifted’. This study presents a novel perspective on group singing, highlighting the importance of participant experience as a means of understanding music as a holistic and complex adaptive system. It validates findings about group singing from previous studies—in particular the stability of the social bonding effect as a less variant characteristic in the face of environmental and other situational influences, alongside its capacity for mental health recovery. It establishes a subjective sociocultural and musical understanding of group singing, by expanding on these findings to centralise the importance of individual experience, and the consciousness of that experience as descriptive and reflective self-awareness. The ways in which participants describe and discuss their experiences of group singing and its benefits points to a complex interdependence between a number of musical, neurobiological and psychosocial mechanisms, which might be independently and objectively analysed. An emerging theory is that at least some of the potency of group singing is as a resource where people can rehearse and perform ‘healthy’ relationships, further emphasising its potential as a resource for healthy publics
Finding democracy in music
No full textFor a century and more, the idea of democracy has fuelled musicians’ imaginations. Seeking to go beyond music’s proven capacity to contribute to specific political causes, musicians have explored how aspects of their practice embody democratic principles. This may involve adopting particular approaches to compositional material, performance practice, relationships to audiences, or modes of dissemination and distribution.
Finding Democracy in Music is the first study to offer a wide-ranging investigation of ways in which democracy may thus be found in music. A guiding theme of the volume is that this takes place in a plurality of ways, depending upon the perspective taken to music’s manifold relationships, and the idea of democracy being entertained. Contributing authors explore various genres including orchestral composition, jazz, the post-war avant-garde, online performance, and contemporary popular music, as well as employing a wide array of theoretical, archival, and ethnographic methodologies. Particular attention is given to the contested nature of democracy as a category, and the gaps that frequently arise between utopian aspiration and reality. In so doing, the volume interrogates a key way in which music helps to articulate and shape our social lives and our politics
Book review: 'Music in their time: the memoirs and letters of Dora and Hubert Foss' ed. Stephen Lloyd, Diana Sparkes, & Brian Sparkes.
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This classical masterpiece is like nothing else in music – why isn't it better known?
No full textIvan Hewett reviews Josef Suk: Asrael Symphony, recorded by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
A guide to effective online music lessons
No full textA guide to conducting effective and enjoyable online music lessons. The content of this video is based on: Lisboa T, Jonasson P, and Johnson C (in press), Synchronous online learning, teaching and performance, in Gary E. McPherson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Music Performance, Oxford University Press. For further details see http://researchonline.rcm.ac.uk/id/eprint/1386/
Intolerance
No full textMusic for the film 'Intolerance' (2020) directed by Giuliano Giacomelli and Lorenzo Giovenga