2009 Symposium Schedule
Friday, April 17, 2009
Friday’s events will take place at the CCRMA Stage
2:00 - 2:10 PM Opening Remarks: Jonathan Berger
2:10 - 3:00 PM Jonathan Berger
Title: Retaining a Sense of Spontaneity in Performance
Abstract: Performing artists typically repeat performances of a particular work, often many times and in within a relatively short period of time. In this paper we explore the ability to retain a sense of spontaneity and inventiveness under these conditions, focusing on aspects of expectation formulation and violation in performance.
3:00 - 4:00 PM Aaron Lee Berkowitz
Title: Cognition in Improvisation: The Art and Science of Spontaneous Musical Performance
Abstract: The ability to improvise represents one of the highest levels of musical achievement. An improviser must master a musical language to such a degree as to be able to spontaneously invent stylistically idiomatic compositions on the spot. This feat is one of the pinnacles of human creativity, and yet its cognitive basis is poorly understood. This talk will explore cognition in improvisation from neurobiological and musicological perspectives, presenting the results of brain imaging experiments alongside findings from interviews with improvisers. Though disparate, these sources provide a convergent picture of the improvising mind, suggesting that musical improvisation draws on some of the very same neural resources as the more mundane but equally infinitely creative faculties of spontaneous speech and action.
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Daniel Abrams and Nina Kraus
Title: Cognitive-sensory interaction in the neural encoding of music and speech
Abstract: Music and speech perception relies on the confluence of basic perceptual abilities as well as higher-order cognitive function. Here I will present two lines of evidence linking the interplay between low-level sensory processing in the auditory system and higher-order cognitive function associated with music and speech processing. First I will present evidence showing that musical experience profoundly impacts rudimentary acoustical representations measured in the human brainstem. Importantly, musical experience not only strengthens acoustical representations of music stimuli, but also appears to generalize to speech stimuli. Second, I will show that syntactic processing of music and speech stimuli relies on a widely-distributed network in the human brain, including low-level auditory structures of the auditory brainstem. Together the data suggest that neural structures thought to be primarily “sensory” in nature play a role in higher-order cognitive processing of biologically-relevant acoustical signals. These results support the view that neural structures underlying acoustical processing of speech and music are tightly coupled with structures necessary for higher-order functions related to cognition.
Dinner Break
7:30 PM Evening Concert: Josh Roseman and the Water Surgeons
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Saturday’s Events will take place at the CCRMA Stage
10:00 - 11:00 AM Vinod Menon
Title: Saliency, Attention, and Synchronization of Brain Responses During Music Listening
Abstract: In this talk I will discuss recent progress in understanding brain processes involved in salience detection and attention regulation during music listening. I will discuss research findings in the context of inter-subject synchronization of brain responses and the extent to which brains work alike during music listening.
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Gregory T. Lombardo
Title: Play and the Creative Process: Substance, Technique, Audience, and the Artist's Mind as the Crucible of Creativity
Abstract: Anyone familiar with the act of creation--composer or performer--has experienced the altered state in which the artist transcends his own personality and any expectations she or he had approached with. The presentation will discuss art as a specialized form of play that brings about an altered state of consciousness out of which exceptional acts emerge. Beginning with a definition of play, and art as a special form of play, the dynamic interplay of substance (the subject, the modality, and the material used), technique, audience, and the artist's mind create a tension--a play--that transcends these elements, not in a mystical but an intelligible process. A process, however, that is different than knowing in the usual sense, or skill, or even genius. It is a process that draws from and adds to the historical milieu. Consequently, the character or style of art is particular to the cultural milieu from which it arises as well as particular to the artist or creator.
Lunch Break
1:30 - 2:15 PM Mark Applebaum
Concert: Composer, improviser, and instrument-builder Mark Applebaum presents a short concert of works illustrating varied approaches to improvisation. The performance includes "Intellectual Property," a work for disklavier with pre-recorded and live improvisers in a mad, trans-idiomatic contest over the keys, "Mouseketier Praxis" for Applebaum's bizarre sound-sculpture made of junk, hardware, and found objects accompanied by a battery of live electronics, and John Zorn's classic game piece "Cobra," performed by [sic]--the Stanford Improvisation Collective. The performances will serve as the basis for brief commentary on interrelated issues, including thoughts on the experimental improviser's challenge to evolve a mannerist culture out of missing pre-classic and classical antecedents.
2:30 - 3:30 PM Ingrid Monson
Title: Emergence and Improvisation
Abstract: This paper explores the interactive emergence of musical shape in improvisation and poses several preliminary hypotheses about how recent work in cognition and perception can move the analysis of emergence beyond semiotic frameworks and their conceptual limitations. My case studies are drawn from jazz improvisation and music of Neba Solo, a balafonist from Mali. Beginning with the metapragmatic semiotic framework that I have used in earlier work to approach the issue of interactive emergence in jazz improvisation, I explore the place of indeterminacy and multiplicity in recent understandings of the brain. A key aspect of perception that interest me is the conscious focusing of attention, or perceptual agency, and its place in understanding aural illusions.
3:45 - 4:45 PM Keith Sawyer
Title: Improvisational Creativity: The Genius of the Group
Abstract: In most musical traditions around the world, performances are improvised in groups of two or more performers. This is in stark contrast to European musical traditions, where performances are guided by a score. When improvising in a group, musicians must generate novel music, while listening closely to what their partners are creating at the same time. Improvisation raises many challenging questions for our understanding of musical creativity more generally: (1) How are the creative processes of improvisation related to the creative processes of composition? (2) Are the mental processes of an improvising musician significantly different from the mental processes of a musician performing from a score? (3) How can we best explain the role of social interaction and collaboration in ensemble improvisation? (4) Can improvisation inform how we provide music education to children? My talk will address these questions by drawing on psychological studies of creativity--in the arts generally, in musical improvisation, and in theater improvisation.
4:45 - 5:00 PM Closing Remarks: Jonathan Berger
5:00 PM Concert: Moy Eng and Bill Murphy
Dinner Break
8:00 PM 50 Years of Kind of Blue: A Live Jazz Laboratory
Presented by Stanford Lively Arts, Kresge Auditorium
(Tickets to this concert can be purchased separately through Lively Arts. A special discount is available for all symposium registrants. Please register for Music and the Brain symposium to obtain your discount code.)
