Elisabeth Damai Salverda

Elise is a doctoral researcher in Music, Thought and Technology at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent. She grew up playing the piano. Her quest to learn about sound, and the piano as a sound system, stems from her childhood curiosity about the variety of sounds pianos make in states of disrepair. She started by teaching herself, worked for several years as an apprentice in London, and enrolled on a course in Antwerp. This led to a transformative encounter with Pierre Gevaert, keyboard instruments conservator at the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels, with whom she has had the fortune to collaborate since 2016, and who introduced her to the lutheal by Georges Cloetens, now a focus of her PhD research.

She received a Distinction in her MA in Music from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2021 ('New music for piano-viole, a mechanically bowed keyboard instrument from 1830'). Her publications include, as co-author: 'Restoration and Reinvention: Reviving the Piano-viole', Galpin Society Journal, 2019. She is grateful to have been supported by Help Musicians UK, The Edward James Foundation, Arts Council England, the Bert Jansch Foundation, Sound and Music UK; and CAMP bursaries to attend creative workshops in environmental, hidden, and harmonic sound with Chris Watson, Christina Kubisch, and Tashi Wada. Seeking a patron saint of the arts - all enquiries: elisabeth.damai@docartes.be