Ep. 40: Dr Maiko Kawabata

*All Talking Classical podcasts formerly on SoundCloud redirected to Anchor.* In this podcast, I'll be talking to Dr Maiko Kawabata, Lecturer at the world-famous Royal College of Music. This podcast discussion was recorded earlier this month, in the wake of the tragic events surrounding the murdering of George Floyd. It was also recorded just a year after the pioneering symposium "Cultural Imperialism and the New 'Yellow Peril' in Western Classical Music," which took place in June 2019 at Senate House, London. The aim of this study way to encourage open discussions about "yellowness" and race within the classical music industry and to pave the way for further discussions such as those. You can read the fascinating report from this event here, which I helped to minute: https://bit.ly/2JmeCKx. We also talk about Dr Kawabata's background as a professional violinist and how she combines this with her work in academia to explore in her research notions of virtuosity, particularly, in the violin tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We discuss what virtuosity means today and some preconceptions around this construct. She has published a book that dispels common ideas around virtuosity, with specific reference to Paganini, who was, of course, one of the great violin virtuosi of his day. Many thanks to Dr Kawabata for talking to me! Interview recorded 4 July 2020; podcast published 30 October 2020. Maiko's bio: https://www.rcm.ac.uk/research/people/details/?id=04456. Music used in this podcast: Music by audionautix.com. "Alla What (parody)," Creative Commons Music by Jason Shaw on Audionautix.com. Used in full and edited forms for the podcast.