Exchange Talk: Annual Research Showcase

Come along to find out what some of our research students are working on, in an evening of fast paced presentations. You’ll get a glimpse into the wide range of research at RCS from students at various stages of their projects.

Connor Civatte –  Scottish Traditional Music, Video Game Music, and Breaking Cultural Codes

Connor Civatte is originally from North Carolina and is in year 2 of his PhD.  He came to Scotland in 2020 to undertake his Bachelor’s at the RCS and studied Traditional Music Fiddle Performance.  After graduating, he switched to research and began his project, which combines traditional music, composition, and video game scoring into one creation.   When he’s not composing or playing his fiddle, he enjoys reading sci-fi/fantasy novels, lifting weights, going to metal concerts, and hiking.

Gregory Ha – Resonance, Ritual, and Silence: Interpreting Contemporary Korean Piano Music

Gregory Ha is a first-year Doctor of Performing Arts candidate at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. His research focuses on contemporary Korean piano repertoire and performance-led artistic inquiry within intercultural music practice.

Sholpan Sharbakova Miller  – “Unravelling the Artistry of Nikolai Medtner through Contemporary Art Forms”

Sholpan Sharbakova Miller is a concert pianist, visual artist, and Doctoral candidate in Performance Art whose research centres on the music of Nikolai Medtner through an interdisciplinary lens combining performance, visual art, and film. Her artistic practice bridges concert performance and contemporary visual media, seeking new ways to experience and understand classical repertoire.

Kennth Tay – Composing the Future: Sustaining the Ecology of Choral Creativity

Kenneth Tay is a composer, conductor, and choral practitioner whose research spans intercultural sacred music and the creative ecology of contemporary composition. He recently completed a PhD in Music Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where his research explored how Southeast Asian musical traditions and narratives can converse with Western sacred music to create spaces for intercultural encounter. His music have been performed internationally by ensembles including The Marian Consort (2025), University of Delaware Chorale (2024), and Arcadian Singers (2023), and featured at the Singapore Choral Festival (2025), BBC Radio 3 (2024), and the World Symposium on Choral Music in Istanbul (2023).

Mujie Yan – Folk Music and Patriotic Nostalgia: A comparative analysis of Leoš Janáček and Bohuslav Martinů’s keyboard music.

Having recently made her solo harpsichord debut with the Institut Français d’Écosse at St. Cecilia’s Hall in Edinburgh, as well as a Cypriot debut of Duo Immersio with the Ledra Music Soloists, Mujie Yan is a versatile pianist and harpsichordist from Shaanxi, China, actively performing and residing in Glasgow, UK and Budapest, Hungary. A young artist of Accademia Chigiana, European Music Institute Vienna, Festival Academy Budapest and Leeds Song Festival 2025, her musical steps traversed throughout continental Europe and the UK.

Jiaquan Yang –  Growing up Under the Spotlight：The Hidden Roots of Performance Anxiety

Jiaquan Yang is a guzheng performer from China with academic training in music performance and education. She studied at Xinghai Conservatory of Music and the University of Sheffield.