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Performance

My performances are influenced by two fascinations:   my fascination with the creative process and with the music being written in our own time.   My interest in the creative process has led me to an exploration of how music is processed in the brain and how that affects us as performers and teachers.   My fascination with music of our own time has led me to commission, premiere, and record many works in diverse styles by American experimental composers.   The combination of these two interests has, in turn, had an impact on my understanding of, and my teaching of, the standard repertoire.   Imagine if we could have asked Beethoven how he really wanted the Moonlight Sonata to sound!   We have that opportunity with today's composers, and studying and performing the music of today can't help but have an enlightening influence on how we approach music of earlier centuries, much of which also holds a fascination for me.  

"Svard plays with enormous sureness and poetry . . .
      she has excellent taste, great intellectual and artistic curiosity, and rock-solid technique."
             – Fanfare