and currently there is a very limited research context for studying
the creation of a live performance of music involving a score. This paper presents
preliminary artistic research on live music performance from the perspective of a classical
professional pianist working within a chamber music context. It addresses two broad
questions: 1) How do performers continue to learn on stage? and 2) What methods are
appropriate for documenting and analysing a live performance in terms of musical
content, social significance, and as a research outcome for dissemination to the wider
research community? It is argued that performers continue to learn on stage, and that
among other things a live performance is a site of knowledge production. The project
takes the value of the live event for the performer as the starting point and thereby
moves beyond the interests of merely gaining new knowledge and understanding into an
area where artistic engagement with and commitment to the ‘object’ of research, i.e. the
live performance, necessitates an interested and subjectively valorized positioni ng of the
performer-researcher. The project also contributes to artistic research in music
performance by motivating the emergence of a specifically performer-oriented discourse
on live music-making.