ProfessorNeal Peres Da Costa

Over the past 30 years, Peres Da Costa has been a leader in the field of historically informed performance (HIP) or period performance of music spanning the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. He has particular expertise in researching and applying historical performing practices (elucidated in written texts and early recordings) using period-appropriate instruments. This he combines with practice-led methods including recording emulation (embodiment) and cyclical research processes, to re-imagine performances and performing styles of pre-recording eras. He is particularly excited by how this methodolgy enables experimental application of historical practices, not to recreate the past, but to expand the expressive choices available (the toolkit) to performers today. This has potential to encourage creativity, sponteneity, improvisation and higher levels of artistic agency and strenghten performer's roles is bringing music to life.

In the next 5 years, Peres Da Costa will be deeply engaged in two ARC Discovery Projects (see above), investigating music making in early colonial NSW and bel canto (beautiful singing) in the period 1700-1900. In both projects he is leading stellar research teams in interdisciplinary work, interacting with national and international researchers of high repute, and collaborating with Indigenous researchers, and institutions including Griffith University, the University of Music and Performing Arts (Vienna), and Western University (Ontario).

Peres Da Costa is also working on the multidisciplinary Neuromusic Collaborative project, bringing together researchers from the Univerity of Sydney's Brain and Mind Centre and SCM to develop interventions that examine the effects of music training on healthy brain ageing.