At the invitation of cognitive psychologist Dr. Laurel Trainor, ENSEMBLE VIVANT, the flagship group of performers/educators for Euterpe: Music Is The Key, performed at the inaugural concert for McMaster University’s LIVE LAB: MIMM (McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind), Hamilton in September 2014. The musicians of Ensemble Vivant are among Euterpe’s extensive roster of world-class performers and educators from the classical and jazz communities.
Dr. Trainor has done ground-breaking neuroscience research on music and the mind that corroborates the practical work that Euterpe: Music Is The Key has been doing for more than 15 years. Dr. Trainor strongly advocates participation by children in music-making activities and has been particularly excited by Euterpe: Music Is The Key’s compelling evidence-based music education performance programs of Classical, Jazz, and related musical styles. These unique, critically important programs, which involve children’s participation throughout, are known to plant musical seeds which inspire kids to want to learn music, to play an instrument, to make music with others and to want to hear more of this music. The long-term educational and health benefits of Classical, Jazz, and related musical styles are well-known, yet sadly vitally important music programs remain unavailable to most children in Canada.
Furthermore, scientific studies have documented that most children today are not exposed to these important musical styles either recorded or live. Without Euterpe: Music Is The Key’s work, for example, the scientific findings in and of themselves are not able to benefit our children and youth. As Dr. Trainor wrote, Euterpe’s invaluable music education performance programs “are of vital importance for putting children and others on the path to be enriched by the known benefits of this music.”
The following photographs document pictorially some of the experiments that Dr. Trainor conducted on the members of Ensemble Vivant while the group was performing, which included the musicians wearing brain signal sensor gear, sensors for motion capture, and more.
Ensemble Vivant performers: Catherine Wilson, pianist; Stephen Sitarski, violin; Norman Hathaway, viola; Sybil Shanahan, cello; Jim Vivian, bass
Photos by Jaclyn Appleby
Video by AJ Gray (See Video Gallery below)
Ensemble Vivant performs Bach’s “Little Fugue in G minor”.
Video by AJ Gray
