Resignation and Hymn | Baczkowski | Aestus Quartet

As part of my research as a music psychologist, I investigate what happens in our brains when we listen to music. For the past year I have been involved in a project looking at how this brain data can be incorporated into a musical performance itself. Working together with researchers from the University of Manchester, we have developed a way to create visuals which respond to a listener's brain in real time. In this performance, we used a portable EEG cap to measure our participant's brainwaves in the alpha frequency, and the differences between left and right hemispheres of the brain. This has previously been found to be an indication of feeling positive or negative emotions. This controlled the colour of the visuals, blue for positive emotions and red for negative.

The piece we chose for this performance is one of mine for string quartet called "Resignation". Towards the end, I also added in an arrangement of the hymn tune "Lasst uns erfreuen". This was at the request of BBC Songs of Praise, who filmed this performance for an episode about the power of music which will be broadcast on June 22nd.