Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
March 4–5, 2016

see Conference Schedule

This one-and-a-half day conference will take place at Cornell University on March 4–5, 2016 and will be the highlight of a yearlong project on keyboard cultures and technologies from the French Revolution to the present. The metaphor of networks brings together recent inquiries into the embodiment, performance, and individual discipline of keyboard playing, on the one hand, with scholarly analyses of music’s imbrication in politics. The event will be organized around a keynote lecture-recital entitled Unauthorized Versions: Dogma and Heresy in the Performance of Chopin and Liszt, by pianist and scholar Kenneth Hamilton.

Sessions
Academic presentations begin on Friday at 2 p.m. in Lincoln Hall, home of Cornell University's Department of Music.

Keynote addresses will feature Deirdre Loughridge and James Davies, from the University of California at Berkeley, and sessions involving Cornell and visiting scholars will focus on the keyboard technologies of composers ranging from Bach and Chopin to Ligeti and Cage. Cornell DMA students Ryan MacEvoy McCullough and Shin Hwang present four-hand repertoire, and Daniel Walden of Oerknal! performs Tristan Perich’s Dual Synthesis for harpsichord and electronics. Investigating the boundaries between digital and analog, modern and antique, Keyboard Networks bring together instrument and player, player and listener, sound and public, past and present.

Evening Concerts
In addition to the daytime lecture-performances at Lincoln Hall, two evening concerts take place at Barnes Hall: the above-mentioned Unauthorized Versions program by Kenneth Hamilton on Friday, and to conclude the symposium on Saturday night, Charles Burney’s Musical Tour with Cornell faculty Annette Richards and David Yearsley featuring duos on organ, harpsichord, and fortepiano, with video by Bug Davidson and the Hyphen Collective, in a musical homage to Burney’s travels. Both concerts are at 8 p.m.

Concert Parking For Barnes Hall concerts, free evening and weekend parking is available at the Schoellkopf Field garage. Additional details about the Cornell University Department of Music events and venues may be found here, and campus maps here.

Traveling to Ithaca, NY
The most convenient airport is Ithaca/Tompkins County Regional Airport (ITH). Alternatives are Syracuse, Binghamton, and Elmira, however ground transport is limited and expensive to these airports farther away (1-1.5 hour drive). From New York City, bus services to Ithaca include Shortline (most frequent but slowest), Big Red Bullet (express, but limited service), or Cornell's Campus to Campus coach (direct from midtown but more expensive). The nearest Amtrak station is also in Syracuse. For additional details and links, see visiting Cornell.

Conference organizers: Dietmar Friesenegger, Roger Moseley, Mackenzie Pierce, Annette Richards

With support from the Cornell University Department of Music and Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Events are free and open to the public.