"RESEARCH"

As a practitioner, I am particularly interested in exploring new ways of programming and presenting music with unusual forms and discovering possibilities of composing and performing unusually long compositions by classical composers such as Bach and Schubert and by contemporary composers such as Michael Finnissy, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, Morton Feldman, Frederic Rzewski and myself. Also, I am interested in how programming and performing as composing can redefine the structure of the pieces and reshape their expressivity and interpretation.

 

One of my latest compositions, Sonata-Fantasy The Book of Moments, inspired by Schubert's last three piano sonatas, as part of my research on proportional music progress and creative performance practice, has been premiered with a live audience as well as streamed online by myself over a non-stop live performance last year (certified by Guinness World Record), and the complete recording of this work will be released soon. Based on this research, questions on the related contextual studies and issues of composing and performing long-form music works beyond conventional capacities were discussed and answered.

 

My fully-funded doctoral research on "Creative Programming with Schubert Unfinished Piano Sonatas" begins by considering previous and recent academic research on, and editions of Schubert’s Piano Sonatas, focused on those considered to have been left unfinished by the composer. From here I develop a practical approach to programming Schubert’s unfinished piano sonatas so as to allow them to be included more readily in professional concerts. Alongside my research, I provide both live concerts and recordings of my performances featuring Schubert’s unfinished sonatas and the creative programmes around them. This integrated research project provides me with a substantially new perspective on studying, playing and interpreting Schubert’s music. Furthermore, by finding new possibilities, and evidence to support them, my playing and compositional style have also evolved and developed in a way that surprised me in many positive ways. As a composer-pianist and researcher, I am more interested in the meeting-point between my performance practice, my composition and my research outcomes than in treating them as isolated professional activities. Therefore, while each can be considered independently by readers and listeners, supported by research and performance-as-research evidence respectively, I believe that to fully understand my research, and its innovative approach to programming and performing Schubert’s music in modern concert situations.

 

My research on “Morton Feldman and his Persian Carpet Influenced Music” is a cross-cultural project that presents a performance comparison of cultural resemblances between East and West. My works covering performing and composing contemporary music, creating collaborative music, reworking with existing materials and fragments, and performing as composing and improvising, offer several creative approaches within the notated 20th and 21st-century art music traditions. They also reveal cultural issues that underline the fundamental basis of contemporary art music.

 

One of my current research projects, “Meta-Partita”, an interdisciplinary research project with American Film Director Eric Fraad, and a group of singers, choreographers, dancers, composers and performers on recording, performing, staging and filming Bach’s Complete Six Partitas, is fully funded by Arts Council Ireland.