Dr Dylan Henderson Presents and Performs at Cornell University, New York
Elder Conservatorium PhD graduate and Communications Manager Dr Dylan Henderson recently returned from a three-week trip to the United States. Dylan presented and performed at the festival/conference 'Forte | Piano 2025: Crafting Soundscapes – A Festival Celebrating Pianos in History and History in Pianos' at the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards (CCHK) at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Throughout the six-day festival, 18 historical keyboard instruments (both originals and contemporary copies) were brought together from the CCHK Collection and the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies and showcased across three auditoriums at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts by a stellar line up of 67 speakers, performers, piano builders, restorers, technicians and researchers from America and around the world. Dylan's presentation drew on his award-winning PhD, and included live demonstrations on a very beautiful 1843 Pleyel (pictured below). The festival also included a presentation from the legendary Malcolm Bilson (pictured below, bottom left; now in his late 80s!) on 'Interpreting Dotted Rhythms'. A digital copy of the full program can be viewed here.
Later in the year, Dylan will return to Warsaw to present at the international musicological conference 'Through the Prism of Chopin: Women, Music and Social Change in the Long Nineteenth Century', hosted by the Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina (The Fryderyk Chopin Institute) from Wednesday 3–Friday 5 December. The following week, he will also present in the 2025 Grainger Symposium: Music and Fashion, hosted by the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne from Wednesday 10–Friday 12 December. Dylan has also recently been invited to contribute an article to a special performance-practice-themed issue of The Chopin Review (the NIFC's peer-reviewed, English scholarly journal), edited by Professor David Kasunic (Occidental College, Los Angeles).
