RCM researcher wins £100,000 grant to 3D-print playable historical woodwind instruments

Dr Ingrid Pearson, Senior Academic Tutor at the Royal College of Music, has been awarded a £100,000 award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through UK Research and Innovation to investigate how additive manufacturing – including 3D printing – can be used to create playable replicas of historical woodwind instruments.

The project sits within a wider research culture at the RCM that spans performance science, musicology, and music's material culture. It is home to two research centres: the Centre for Performance Science, a global leader in the interdisciplinary study of performance and its impact on society, and the Wolfson Centre in Music and Material Culture, based in the RCM Museum.

Pearson's work will centre on the two-keyed chalumeau, the earliest single-reed instrument in the Western art music tradition, which emerged in the 1680s. Pearson's research aims to develop a robust methodology for producing replicas suitable for performance, recording, and public engagement, with the goal of 'recalibrating relationships between musicians and collections of historical instruments'.

The project brings together the RCM with the Open University, specialist firm 3D Music Instruments, and Cambridge Woodwind Makers, facilitating collaboration between musicians, researchers and craftspeople. Among the beneficiaries will be artists, scholars, curators, and private collectors of historical instruments.

The research also speaks to questions about the relationship between performers and instrument collections – offering new ways for players to engage with fragile or inaccessible originals without the constraints that come with handling the real thing.

Dr Ingrid Pearson is an Australian-born clarinettist and leading scholar-performer of historical single-reed instruments – chalumeau, clarinet, and basset horn. She has been a member of the Royal College of Music professoriate since 2005, and has performed with The English Concert, The Hanover Band, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, among others.