INTRODUCTION

I have been in schools for twenty-four years of my twenty-eight year long life. Considering that the first four years of our lives we practically learn all the 'basics' like being able to move around physically and learn to speak, I have been a student all of my life so far. After elementary school followed high school and when I was eighteen I immediately I started studying Earth Science. Later I started musicology at the university and as if that was not enough, I started my conservatory education when I was twent-three years old. I filled my head up with a lot of information in these years. And lately I have been thinking about how great this is and how grateful I am to have been able to learn so many different things. Also I noticed that learning things is quite a passion of mine. Many people are done with school after some time, but for me it has always been an interesting place to find new knowledge. But, after this year, my official school career as a student will end. The next logical step after following a musical education, will be going into the wide world to play music. But when I look at myself, I see not only a musician, but also somebody who has been hoarding knowledge for all of my life.

This summer I was invited to give a solo recital on viola in an informal setting. Having only one week to prepare, I used material I was invested in at the time; the cello suites of J.S. Bach. The audience was not familiar with classical music, so I thought of a rough structure of semi-lecture semi-concert. To my surprise, the experience of giving this solo-concert felt like it was my place. For the first time, I was able to be totally myself on stage. To be myself in the role of the musician, because I was backed up with the knowledge I shared with the audience. To be myself in sharing knowledge, because I was able to make a balance between knowledge sharing and enjoying beautiful pieces of music. The ability to have a setting in which I can be the director of all of these things -the words I say, the music I play- felt liberating and inspiring. But I also understood that I had much to learn in the interaction with my audience. For this reason I conducted this research around the question:

How can we transfer knowledge to an audience in a musical performance?

To reach the answer to this question, I have divided my research as following: First, I look at written sources which talk about sharing knowledge. Second, I analyze three different performances which combine classical music performance and lecture-like features and look into how they engage with the audience. Third, I analyze a performance of myself and evaluate the results of feedback from my audience.