York University – April 29-20 2022

Clément Canonne is a CNRS researcher in the « Analysis of Musical Practices » team since 2015. His research has been mainly focused on collective free improvisation, bringing perspectives from ethnography and experimental psychology to understand the musicians’ cognitive and interactional processes, and, more generally, shed new light on joint action and social cognition. Current and future research topics include desynchronization, musical humor, music instruments, and empirical aesthetics.

David Dolan, an international concert pianist, researcher and teacher has devoted a part of his career to the revival of the art of classical improvisation and its applications in performance. In his world-wide solo and chamber music performances, he returns to the tradition of incorporating extemporisations within repertoire in embellished repeats, eingangs & cadenzas, as well as improvised preludes, interludes and fantasies.Yehudi Menuhin’s response to this CD, “When Interpretation and Improvisation Get Together”, was: “David Dolan is giving new life to classical music.” David is a professor of classical improvisation and its application on solo and chamber music performance at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he is the head of the Centre for Creative Performance and Classical Improvisation. He also teaches at the Yehudi Menuhin School, and has been conducting masterclasses and workshops in major music centres and festivals worldwide.

Dr. Örjan de Manzano is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt am Main, and co-founder/board member of the Center for Culture, Cognition, and Health at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. His research bridges different fields of psychology and cognitive neuroscience and combines behavioral experiments, psychometrics, psychophysiology, neuroimaging, and epidemiological methods to learn more about the psychobiological mechanisms underpinning human creativity, personality, and expertise, primarily using music as a model domain.

Dr. Nikki Moran studies musical performance as human practice through both theoretical and original empirical research. Her work to date includes projects involving expert classical North Indian duos, jazz and free improvisers, and western classical ensembles and conductors. She is particularly interested in the ethical and inclusive possibilities of 4E (embedded, extended, embodied, enactive) cognition when this approach is brought to bear on the study of musical performance.

Sageev Oore is a faculty member in Computer Science at Dalhousie University (Halifax), a Research Faculty Member at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Toronto), and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair. He is interested in basic research in machine learning and deep learning, with particular focus on applications of deep learning in audio and music, and computational creativity. He recently spent a year and a half as a Visiting Scientist in Google Brain (California), where he worked on the Magenta team developing generative music systems such as PerformanceRNN. He is also an award-winning musician; as a pianist he has performed as soloist with orchestras both as a classical soloist and as an improviser.

Franziska Schroeder is a saxophonist, theorist, and a Professor for Music and Cultures at the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests include the intersection of critical theory and digital performance, the role of the body in the age of technological change, as well as free improvisation practices.

Matthew Barley has created a unique international career full of improvisation, new music, cutting-edge computer technology, collaboration with jazz and Indian musicians, education, and arranging – but always with cello playing at the heart. He has played with some of the finest orchestras (Frankfurt Radio Symphony, BBC Philharmonic/Scottish, Czech Philharmonic), in some of the greatest concert halls, given premieres by major
composers (MacMillan, Dusapin, Larcher) and appeared on tv and radio worldwide. He counts himself blessed to be able to dream up unusual projects and (usually) make them happen, and also pursue his own personal dreams of spending time with family and in nature. He lives in London with his wife, violinist Viktoria Mullova.