Research Shorts: Music Performance from the Inside Out

This week I’ve been talking to Monia Brizzi about her work with Prof Mine Doğantan-Dack and Prof John Crawford about their work in supporting musicians. Monia described the team’s research as addressing the conversations and ideas in classical music performance culture ‘that can turn the act of music making into a source of anxiety and instead promotes this act as a joyful encounter’. Together, they explore these encounters as bringing the ‘whole (embodied) self of musicians to the moment of performance with the aim of creating deep emotional connections with the music and audiences anew in each performance’.  

Their research has explored how performing musicians’ mental and physical selves (sometimes called the ‘body-mind’ split) can be ‘micro-managed or policed’ in order to ‘conform to certain norms and expectations regarding technique and musicality, many harmful results often follow, including performance anxiety, and loss of one’s sense of agency as a performer’. 

Monia explained that their work has focused on the real-world experiences of how musicians actually experience performance from their own perspectives, using a multi-disciplinary academic approach to gather information and to interpret and understand their findings. They are working to understand the deeper challenges that musicians face, by placing performers’ emotional and physical experiences at the centre of their work.  

Guided by practical and ethical approaches, Monia explained that this research is unusual in starting from the performers first. She explained:

‘Our interdisciplinary collaboration stems from our joint recognition of the unhelpful, and even harmful, dualisms in performance teaching, learning and healthcare that can separate the body from the mind, reason from emotion, and technique from expression.’ 

Learn more: 

• Attend an upcoming free workshop in London with the team: ‘In Search of Felt Meanings: Exploring Musicians’ Lived Experiences’, Wednesday 2 April 2025, 11.00am to 1.00pm. Booking details here. 

Read more: 

• Specialist panel for the 42nd Annual Performing Arts Medicine Association International Symposium held in July 2024 at UCL 
• Music Performers’ Lived Experiences forthcoming 2025, Routledge 2 volumes, edited by Professor Mine Doğantan-Dack. 
• International Journal of Music, Health, and Wellbeing forthcoming article, 2025. 

Interview by Dr Sarah K. Whitfield, Research Manager for Music Mark