SUB-THEME: 1.3 AIRS TEST BATTERY OF SINGING SKILLS

Annabel Cohen (B.A. McGill; Ph. D. Queen’s University; ARCT Royal Conservatory - Toronto) has dedicated her career to the study of music perception and cognition, with extensions to multimedia and learning in a cultural context. She is Principal Investigator and Project Director of AIRS (Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing), (www.airsplace.ca), a 7-year international collaboration, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through its major collaborative research initiative program As a Full Professor of Psychology at the University of Prince Edward Island, she directs the Auditory Perception and Music Cognition Research and Training Laboratory (http://discoveryspace.upei.ca/musicog) and the Group for Interdisciplinary Research in Culture, Multimedia, Technology and Cognition. (http://vre.upei.ca/cmtc). The latter is associated with an infrastructure grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation for which she is the project director and is a partnership with UNB and U de Moncton.

Her research has contributed to the understanding of tonality, music transposition, the acquisition of music grammar, effects of film music, development of singing, and creativity appearing in such publications as The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology (2009), and the Sage Encyclopedia of Case Study Research (in press). A recent focus with her honours students has been the development of a short battery of singing skills, as described in a report in Neurosciences and Music III (i2009, Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci.). She is the Editor of  Psychomusicology – Music, Mind and Brain, serves on the consulting boards of several other journals, and is a fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association. She has published over 90 articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings papers and serves as an associate or consulting editor for the journals: Canadian Acoustics, Musicae Scientiae, Psychology of the Arts, Creativity and Aesthetics, Psychology of Music, Music Perception, Music and the Moving Image, and  The Soundtrack. She has given invited presentations in Japan, Korea, Holland, Belgium, Germany, and America. Her research has also received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). She is an Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University involved in graduate lectures and supervision.

Music Perception and Cognition Research in Singing; Instrumentation for Music Research; Cross-cultural and lifespan developmental studies

As the Principal Investigator and Project Director of the AIRS MCRI (Major Collaborative Research Initiative), I am responsible for the intellectual leadership of the team and for the integration of the program’s different components. I usually participate in the organization of workshops and conferences, lead or chair team meetings and encourage collaboration across projects. I also lead one of the sub-themes (1.1) in theme 1 Development - The AIRS Test Battery, however I have strong interests in each of the themes and expect to develop research prototypes for each on the UPEI campus as well as keep in close contact with the researchers directly leading or involved in these sub-themes. I am fortunate to have the help and support of a multidisciplinary team at UPEI and appreciate the involvement of the extraordinary team members across Canada and worldwide.

My career has focused on research and teaching in music psychology. Having seen the field of music psychology grow from almost nothing, enables me to nurture this interdisciplinary sub-specialty of research in singing. My background in various aspects of music performance  in piano and flute, training both classically and in jazz studies provides further perspective. My studies of classical singing, primarily with Pamela Campbell over more than a decade, have also provided a special foundation for directing the AIRS project.

The AIRS collaboration will enable me and my AIRS colleagues to begin to answer the big question:  what are the individual, cultural, and innate determinants of the ability to sing.  It will enable me to see my longstanding devotion to the field of music psychology bear fruit in regard to theory (as singing is the source of musical behaviour)  and to applications, in terms of making the world a better place through improved intergenerational and cross-cultural understanding, better physical and mental health, and better education with respect to musical knowledge itself and the use of music to teach other important information.  The  thought that we can actually increase our understanding of the mind and behaviour and improve the lives of people around the world is very exciting and motivating.  AIRS provides me access to wonderful colleagues and opportunities for inspirational interactions.  It provides funding for 7 years, which is such an unusual gift to behavioural research if we plan wisely.  The benefits to students conducting research in singing and music  that AIRS provides are also very motivating, especially when I think what such opportunities would have meant to those of us starting out several decades ago.