ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a pilot research and development project designed to explore the potential of post-performance dialogues between musicians and audiences at live events. Classical musicians generally have rather limited means of obtaining direct and detailed feedback from their live audiences. At the time of writing, this practice is not yet common in classical music performances in the United Kingdom. One notable exception to these trends is the set of papers published in a special issue of Music Perception in 2004, exploring dimensions of audience response to live performances of a new work, Angel of Death, by the composer Roger Reynolds, who collaborated with a team of psychologists and musicologists. Just as the student composer in Event A had found that the research process itself had exerted an unexpected positive effect, the participants in Seven Deadly Sins found that the very process of formulating questions for the post-performance discussion.
