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Catherine Foxcroft, a South African pianist hailed by critics and audiences alike as a brilliant soloist whose dynamic performances bring audiences to their feet time after time, is to present a seminar at Rhodes titled ‘Emotion in performance: the neglected dimension’ tonight (17 March 2010).
The seminar, hosted by the Music and Musicology Department, will take place 17h00 today in the Faculty of Humanities Seminar room.
In her paper Foxcroft will present and discuss some current findings on the role emotions play in music. It will describe how some performers access and express their emotions and those of the composer, transforming music from academia to artistry. She will discuss several multidisciplinary approaches to music and emotion, including neuropsychological, psychological, philosophical, anthropological and sociological perspectives.
Although respected as a fundamental part of psychology, human emotion has not been regarded as worthy of scientific, neurological or psychological research until very recently. Arguing that emotions were too difficult to measure in a laboratory, too obscure and subjective, many scientists chose to apply Descartes's early theory of separating the human body from mind.
Despite the fact that many people report that they turn to music primarily for an emotional experience, musical emotions have been marginalised in musicological research, with some notable exceptions such as Hevner (1935), Seashore (1938), Meyer (1956) and Cooke (1959), until their resurgence in the last two decades.
"Sure footedness in the first and delicate phrasing in the second movement by Foxcroft made for an absolutely breathtaking musical experience, only to be completely blown away later by the sheer mastery and brilliance of her craft in the third movement" Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 3 Main Event National Arts Festival Review Grahamstown 2009.
As a postgraduate student of Prof Arie Vardi at the Hannover Hochschule fur Musik und Theater in Germany, she studied, competed and performed internationally for over a decade before being appointed to the Rhodes Department of Music and Musicology in 2003. She frequently appears as a concerto soloist with South African orchestras.
Ms Foxcroft performs chamber and solo recitals nationally and internationally, appearing in 2008 in a recital tour of eight concerts across SA and Zimbabwe. She has been a jury member of several prestigious national music competitions (UNISA, ABSA, SAMRO) and a guest faculty member on the biennial international piano symposium held at Stellenbosch University since 2006.
As scholarship winners and prize winners of some of the top national competitions (UNISA, SAMRO, FMR, KZNPO), her students have been recognised as being among the new generation of upcoming SA pianists. Her four CDs are broadcast regularly on FMR and SAfm. She is currently researching music and cognition as part of a DMus which she is studying through the University of Pretoria.