Josephine Vains

Session 3.5: Speaking through music – finding the rhetoric in persuasive musical performance

Session: Josephine is a passionate believer that musicians of all levels can, with a little knowledge of musical language and rhetoric, build on their natural communicative instincts and engage directly with their audiences and their musical selves on a deeper emotional level.

In this presentation she will:

• Give a brief introduction to the Classical ideas of rhetoric as developed by the Ancient Greeks and Romans
• Provide musical examples from the standard canon of composers (Bach, Beethoven, Haydn) as well as some contemporary examples
• Perform well-known examples from the cello repertoire, showing how young musicians can project a more convincing performance. These examples will all be curated from AMEB repertoire, ranging from Grade 6 to LMusA level
• Show how speech and music connect including with the effective use of gesture, tone, affect, musical figures, imitation and repetition to produce a persuasive (and entertaining) performance

Josephine Vains is an Australian cellist, chamber musician and educator, with a performance career that encompasses modern and historical cello. An adventurous spirit has taken her to some far-flung concert venues – from a 1000 year old cave in the heart of China to mountain-top Bach in the French Alps. Regular performances with Firebird Trio, Accademia Arcadia, Melbourne Baroque Orchestra, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and CellOZ fill her calendar. Her recordings have been released on HUSH, ABC Classics, Resonus Classics, Tall Poppies and reviewed in Gramophone Magazine.

Josephine relishes training the next generation of Australia’s musicians at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School, and the University of Melbourne. Her cello and chamber music students are regular prize winners in Australia and overseas, including for Strike A Chord, MRC Bach Competition, Villa Musica (Italy) and more. In addition, she gives regular masterclasses in Australia and overseas, including for MCM Young Artist Academy, iartschool (China) and Pettman Academy (NZ). She performs on a Thomas Dodd Cello (London), 1800 and a Thomas Kennedy Cello (London) 1850.