Musical Athletes

The Cheltenham Music Festival, which is on until 12 July, has this weekend devoted to Musical Athletes. This is part of the Cheltenham Festival's Laboratory in which medical science is brought to bear on all the Cheltenham Festivals. The event this weekend looks at how musical performance affects the performer's body and how athletic they need to be. There is a surprising amount of illness and injury in musicians and a group of scientists and performers, including pianist Melvyn Tan, will be looking at the various parts of the human body and how performance affects it.

The event was previewed in a nice article in the Guardian, covering how Tan's body was monitored during performance to see what the physiological effects were.