Research

Enhancing performance

The RCM’s Centre for Performance Science, led by Professor Aaron Williamon, is one of the leading research groups for developing empirical scientific approaches to questions of performance education and development, skill acquisition and expertise, musicians’ health and wellbeing.

It has an international reputation for creating collaborations between the disciplines of psychology, applied physiology, music education and performance in real-world educational and professional contexts.

The RCM’s performance science researchers are responsible for projects in the areas of:

• musicians’ health and wellbeing
• musical development
• phenomenology of performance

Musicians’ health and wellbeing

The RCM has led many projects and symposia on vital questions of how to enhance the wellbeing and self efficacyof musicians, as well as how to manage performance-related stress and ill health. This has led to several high-profile collaborations with partners across the arts and the medical sciences, including the Conservatoires UK (CUK) Research Forum, the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine, London’s Science Museum and the medical faculties of Imperial College and University College London.

Musical development

Drawing on the RCM’s own teaching environment, researchers from the Centre for Performance Science are involved with casting new light on how musicians learn, using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. For example, projects from Rosie Perkins and Dr Tania Lisboa, Research Fellow in Performance Science, and Jackie Clifton, Research Fellow in Music and Visual Impairment have led to new strategies for skills training and life-long learning that can enhance pedagogical practice in conservatories and wider afield.

Phenomenology of performance

Within the Centre for Performance Science, staff and student researchers are involved with analysing some of the key challenges performers’ face, such as how to measure success in performance, how to enhance processes of memorisation and how to document the detailed choices performers make.