Ian Cross is is responsible for teaching and research in science and music in the Faculty at Cambridge, where he is Director of the Faculty's Centre for Music and Science. Some of the undergraduate coursework projects arising from a final-year course introducing students to the experimental study of musical behaviours can be accessed at the Perception and Performance page; details of graduate students working under his supervision can be found at the Science & Music group home page, along with details of other members of the group. He is involved in experimental investigations of the perception of tonal structures and of the role of culture in shaping musical cognition, and is also actively interested in exploring the general limits and constraints on scientific accounts of music. Current interests also include exploration of the relation between music and cognitive evolution (see the Lithoacoustics page). He is also collaborating with Jim Woodhouse, Brian Moore and Claudia Fritz in the Departments of Engineering and Psychology on a Leverhulme Trust-funded project exploring the perceptual correlates of violin acoustics.

He is presently a participant in the Entrainment Network (funded by the British Academy), and in the Musical Acoustics Network, funded by the EPSRC.

He is a member of the Committee of the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE), and from 1992 until 2000 was on the Executive Committee of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM). He is on the editorial boards of Psychology of Music, Music Perception and Cognitive Semiotics, and from 1997 until 2000 was the Associate Editor (English language) of ESCOM's journal Musicae Scientiae.

He supports Partick Thistle, is a guitarist, having studied in Scotland with Norman Quinney and Ron Moore and in London with Tim Walker. He suggests that any interested guitarists check out the site of new Cambridge maker Martin Woodhouse. He recommends that interested listeners (and guitarists) should visit Philip John Lee's website (Philip, who died this March, was a real exponent of flamenco puro and is sadly missed). He is the only member of the Music Faculty at Cambridge (as far as he is aware) to have rejected an offer to join the Bay City Rollers.

A couple of recent media outings on the topic of Music and the brain:
Ian Cross
Faculty of Music
University of Cambridge
West Road
Cambridge CB3 9DP
UK
Tel: +44-1223 335185
Fax: +44 1223 335067
e-mail: ic108 at cam.ac.uk
Publications
Go back to Ian Cross's home page