Presenters
Siena Jazz University (Italy)
Presenter: Am I Right? Handedness questions in the classical guitar repertoire.
Linksgespielt e.V. (Germany)
Presenter: ‘Left-handed’ instrumental play in Germany – from an artistic, educational and academic perspective
Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg (Germany)
Presenter: Folk Songs for Inverted Guitar. Practice-based observations on playing guitar transcriptions ‘upside down’.
Scientific and Organising Committee
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Co-organiser + Presenter: Maybe YOU’RE Playing Backwards. Laterality, identity and the case for the idiodextrous brain.
Gabrielle Kaufman
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Co-organiser + Moderator
Francesc Cortès Mir
UAB – Moderator
Sílvia Martínez García
UAB – moderator
Lidia López Gómez
UAB – Moderator
Acknowledgements
Organised by: The Department of Art and Musicology, UAB
Organising committee: Gregory Gottlieb, Gabrielle Kaufman
This symposium has been made possible thanks to funding from the research group:
PID2021-124376NB-C32, Música y Ciudad: lugares, instituciones y encuentros desde la Revolución Industrial
Participant Biographies
Francesca Naibo
Francesca Naibo (Italian guitarist, improviser, researcher and teacher) moves fluently across all the different conjugations of the guitar. Involved in research for solo performance, she is focused on exploring sound in the fields of free improvisation and contemporary music. Francesca is interested in using both the acoustic and the electric natures of her instrument.
Francesca studied in Venice, Milan, Bern and Basel, graduating in classical guitar and free improvisation. She lectured on improvisation and guitar at the ‘2nd Dublin International Guitar Symposium 2019: Back to the future’ and at the ‘21st Century Guitar Conference 2021: Unconventional approaches’.
Francesca has published two papers: ‘Namatoulee’, in Divulgazione Audio Testuale n.7, il Sileno Edizioni (2020); and ‘Marc Ribot’s Exercises in Futility’, in R. Torres, A. Brandon, & J. Noble (Eds.), Proceedings of The 21st Century Guitar Conference 2019 & 2021 (2023).
She has released two solo albums and performed in Europe, the U.S., Australia and South Africa. In 2025, Francesca obtained the Deep Listening® Teaching Certification and a text score by Francesca was featured in the book A Year of Deep Listening. 365 Text Scores for Pauline Oliveros. Since 2024, Francesca has been a PhD student at Siena Jazz University, exploring guitar handedness through improvisation.
Laila Kirchner
Laila Kirchner, born left-handed, studied the cello and other musical instruments using the right-handed technique. Since the age of 28, she has also performed on a left-handed cello and wrote her bachelor’s thesis on the subject. She later switched to the left-handed technique on the piano, the tabla tarang and the flute. She holds two Master’s degrees in music education, specialising in Baroque cello, Argentine tango and classical Indian music. She is a member of Linksgespielt e.V., an association that connects and raises the profile of left-handed musicians worldwide. Through lectures, workshops and articles, she provides information on left-handed instrumental performance and is currently planning her PhD on the subject within the field of higher education development.
Danica Hobden
Danica Hobden is an Australian guitarist, improviser, teacher and researcher based in Hamburg, Germany, with an active presence in both Europe and Australia. Her work spans folk, jazz, rock, and classical traditions, while often venturing into experimental and interdisciplinary collaborations.
Danica is a graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, holding a Bachelor of Music Studies in Classical Guitar and a Bachelor of Music Performance in Jazz Guitar as well as a Master of Music (Dr. Langner Jazzmaster) through the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg with a focus on composition, having studied with her musical heroes Dr. Andrea Keller (Melbourne) and Reinier Baas (Amsterdam).
Her artistic practice includes composing and performing with her modern jazz quartet Warmbluetig, who have performed at various festivals in Germany including ELBJAZZ (2024), Jazz Open (2025), JazzHall Summer Festival (2024) and Domshof Open Space Festival (2025). The group has appeared in a JazzTied TV production, collaborated with the Hamburger Ballett on multiple performances, and released a live EP and video with award-winning drummer Will Guthrie (AU/FR).
She is also active in Hamburg’s free improvisation scene, where she has been able to put her research into practice presenting works such as “In Flight : Dja Dja Wurrung” a solo inverted guitar performance paired with footage from outback Victoria, as well as performing alongside of artists such as Lukas Ligeti, Maya Homburger and Barry Guy, Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura in venues Hamburger Kunsthalle, Ligeti-Zentrum, Resonanz Raum or even an abandoned coal power plant.
“Hobden has crafted interlinked originals that not only reflect her compositional skills but also bring out the best in all six of her colleagues. Thanks to her leadership, both quartets are delightfully collaborative and the interpretations dynamic and captivating. These attributes make It Was Long Ago, It Will Be a Long Time one of the best debuts of 2024.” – Hrayr Attarian, All About Jazz 2024
Greg Gottlieb
Greg Gottlieb is an Australian musician, educator and researcher living in Barcelona, Spain. Since completing a Masters by Research at Middlesex University (London, UK) titled Back-to-Front Bassists: Idiodextrous Approaches to the Double Bass in Jazz in 2016, Greg’s research has expanded to investigate musicians who play any string instrument ‘upside down’, in any style of music, all across the world. He is currently in the early stages of a PhD at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and is exploring research questions related to instruments, bodies, identites and brains, as they pertain to idiodexterity – a term Greg has coined for the uncommon phenomenon of musicians who play string instruments ‘upside down’ and ‘backwards’, reversing the conventional pitch order of the strings in relation to the body.
Hands Across the City 