Cadenza Project & Manchester Camerata Research Concert

The Cadenza project is researching how to improve music for people with hearing loss. A free concert with Manchester Camerata. This is a unique opportunity for you to shape future research on hearing aids while enjoying hearing the fabulous Camerata.

The concert will feature Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral Symphony.

To start with the Camerata will play a movement from the symphony and you can just sit back and enjoy. Then we will start the experiment. The orchestra will then perform short excerpts in different ways to explore common problems people with hearing loss have with live classical music.

You will be asked to give feedback on each rendition via a simple questionnaire. The Camerata will finally play another movement, where you can just relax and listen or do an optional additional research task.

The answers you give will help us to develop new ways to improve music for those who have a hearing loss and/or hearing aids. Results will also be published in scientific papers.

The event will finish with a short Q&A with experts from the Cadenza project so you can ask about hearing loss, hearing aids and listening to music.

The research concert is designed for anyone who enjoys listening to classical music. No specialist listening or analytical skills are needed.

We need an audience that has a mixture of people with and without hearing loss. If you would normally listen to music with hearing aids or a cochlear implant, please use them.

The Cadenza Project is a 5-year UKRI-funded research project involving the Universities of Salford, Sheffield, Nottingham and Leeds with associated partners RNID, Logitech, University of Oldenburg, Sonova and BBC. We are researching how hearing loss harms listening to music and working to improve it. Ethical approval for the research concert will come from the University of Leeds.