This Spring we relaunched our free online course The Importance and Power of Music in our Society.

Astronomer Koen Kuijken and physicist Tjerk Oosterkamp have each been awarded a major subsidy by NWO. The funding will allow them to construct new research facilities.

Playing the piano with your forearm, plucking the strings, sawing through the piano: pianist Luk Vaes's doctoral dissertation covers all the techniques of play for which a piano is NOT designed. His defence ceremony will consist of three concerts and a public defence. 'Musicians were using the interior…

Composer, bass player and ACPA alumnus Ilya Ziblat Shay presented a paper at the Music Weekend and Midlands New Music Symposium, organised by Nottingham Forum for Artistic Research.

Professor Ingrid Tieken (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, LUCL) and Dr Herman Siemens (Institute for Philosophy) have each been awarded an NWO Free Competition award in the Humanities for their research projects.

As part of ILS 2.0 seed money is available for the submission of subsidy proposals and – directly linked and inherent to this – the development of new lines of research. A maximum budget of 40,000 euro is available for each application. In total 180,000 euro is available via this call.

MOOC Music & Society

In a series of six lectures, Jed Wentz, the Utrecht Early Music Festival’s artistic adviser, will acquaint you with subjects central to the developments in early music worldwide. First lecture starts 15 October!

What was the stringed instrument known in medieval and early Renaissance Italy as “cetra”?

This year, Leiden University celebrates its 444th birthday – and when you’re giving a party, you need great music! Neuropsychologist Rebecca Schaefer agrees. She has been fascinated by music since she was a child, and now she studies how music can make us happy, give us energy or calm us down.

This research intents to redefine the limits of the electric guitar.

Over the past year, the lectorate ‘Music, Education & Society’ has worked on a publication with contributions from students and staff from the KC called 'The promise of music'.

Richard Barrett has launched a new digital music label on Bandcamp.

On January 9 the ACPA kicked off their first MOOC Music & Society. And with 1700 (!) applicants we dare to say it is a success!

This dissertation derives from the development of tools for algorithmic composition which extract pitch materials from sound signals, analyzing them according to their timbral and harmonic properties, putting them into motion through diverse rhythmic and textural procedures.

The present study aims to establish and develop guidelines for effective use of the classical guitar’s scoring potential.

How might viola and string quartet playing in the performer-centered, moment-to-moment and communicative style heard on early recordings be brought about today?

The Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) will start in January 2017 with their first MOOC through Coursera: Music & Society. MOOC stands for massive open online course and is a relatively new phenomenon of open access and free internet education in the United States. Big…

In 2016, Leiden University hosts the monthly meetings of the Music and Cultural Analysis reading group.

Under the umbrella of a recently NWO grant focused on using AI to increase quality of life for people with dementia, Rebecca Schaefer’s Music, Brain, Health Technology group will collaborate with TU Delft to co-create social agents focusing on musical interactions together with people with dementia.

On February 8 the 443rd dies natalis will take place in the Pieterskerk in Leiden.

Leiden researchers from different disciplines look together at complex social problems. What happens when they join forces with artists? The results could be seen on Tuesday 11 June during a unique exhibition. Take a look for yourself:

Prof. dr. Marcel Cobussen has published a free e-pub: The Field of Musical Improvisation.

In 2016, Marcel Cobussen successfully applied for two trainee positions at ACPA, funded by the Humanities Research Traineeship Programme at Leiden University. One of the results, a multi-media essay 'In Search of the Public. Exploring Contemporary Performance Practices of Classical Music in The Netherlands'…

In this dissertation the author digs into the constituent elements of River Plate tango in order to decode how specific musical materials were organized and combined by four outstanding musicians: Pugliese, Salgán, Piazzolla and Beytelmann.

Baroque flautist Jed Wentz followed two years of dancing classes in order to develop the right feeling for the gestures required for the Baroque French opera genre ‘tragédie en musique’. In his dissertation, the links between gesture affect and rhythmic freedom in the performance of the tragédie en…

ACPA’s PhD candidate and composer/flutist Ned McGowan will give a lecture at Café Chercher on March 27 called Speed in Music, Brain and Body.

PhD candidate Magda Pucci studied indigenous music in Brazil. She and her group Mawaca travelled through the Amazon and played with peoples there such as the Paiter Suruí, Kayapó, Ikolen-Gavião and the Huni-Kuin. PhD defence on 19 March.

The Organ Art of the first female German concert organist and Bremen Cathedral organist and

On November 5, 2021, Guy Livingston will present at an International Colloquium at the University of Lorraine (France), entitled:

ACPA PhD Candidate Gabriel Paiuk will be guest speaker at the coming UNM – Young Nordic Music Days to take place in Aarhus, Denmark in August 2021.

Apart from his activities as coordinator of the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Rogier Schneemann is co-founder, guitarist and composer of the Dutch-Italian group Azure Hiptronics, originally formed in 2006.

Markus Altena Davidsen was 'extremely happy' when he heard that he and his colleagues had been awarded a grant from the KNAW pilot fund for science communication. Together with partners from all over the country, they are working on a book that should inspire secondary schools to renew their education…

Nadine Akkerman has received a subsidy of two million euros from the European Research Council (ERC) for research into 16th and 17th century English manuscripts. Akkerman: ‘Working with handwritten texts and unravelling their mysteries is one of my passions, and it’s especially rewarding when this work…

In this research project Nizar Rohana analyzes and reflects on taqsīm recordings by two leading figures of ‘ūd playing who were pillars of modern Arabic music, namely the Egyptians Muḥammad al-Qaṣabjī (1898-1964) and Riyāḍ al-Sunbāṭī (1906-1981).

Music venue TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht has decided to ban camera glasses following an incident last month. Bart Schermer, Professor of Law and Digital Technologies, spoke to BNR Nieuwsradio about the legal grounds for such a ban.

In addition to his Film and Literature Studies, Bob van Oosterhout is a bassoonist with several orchestras. He is going to Milan with the student choir and orchestra ‘Collegium Musicum’.

On 7 March, Carlos Roos (lecturer, philosopher, researcher) gave a talk about popular music at Utrecht University, organized by the education committee of Study Association Hucbald (Musicology at Utrecht University).

A new chair has been added to the partnership between Leiden University and the Royal Conservatoire The Hague. Richard Barrett has been appointed Professor of Research in Creative Music (ACPA) as of 1 December 2020. 'For me it is important that music and academia are not placed in an ivory tower.'

Charles wrote an article 'Assimilating Afro Caribbean Carnivalesque Culture' for the publication 'Understanding América. The essential contribution of Afro-American music to the sociocultural meaning of the continent'

A MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) is a free online course available for anyone to enroll. The Orpheus Institute announces its first MOOC on Artistic Research in Music, which will offer an introduction to the most relevant research tools, techniques and methodologies as well as the key concepts of…

ACPA PhD Marina Liontou Mochament will host an online workshop in April.

Many of us love music, but we don’t understand why exactly that is – or how our individual experiences of music can differ. Rebecca Schaefer will research this in the run-up to the SNAAR Festival in Utrecht. And in a unique way: students in vocational education (mbo) will be the researchers.

New research project “(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics”, recently awarded 1.7 million Euros by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)’s Young Independent Researcher Group program.

On Tuesday 22 November 2016 at 4.15 PM Clarence Charles will publicly defend his dissertation entitled Calypso Music, Identity and Social Influence:The Trinidadian Experience at the Academiegebouw in Leiden!

Between 1600 and 1800 countless manuals appeared on the subject: the improvised bass part on the harpsichord, pianoforte or organ. Musician and researcher Kathryn Cok unravels the secrets of the Dutch basso continuo accompaniment for modern-day musicians.

Book publication 'Artistic Research in Music: Discipline and Resistance' marks the 20th anniversary of the Orpheus Institute..