In June 2021, I gave a flash presentation on my program here at Wilfrid Laurier University: the Bachelor of Music specialization in community music. I could talk much longer (and have in other speeches), but this offers a five-minute overview of a few key possibilities and challenges of opening up music training at the university level to applicants who have not been trained in classical music or in conservatory-style music education.
As you might know, I am finishing my PhD in Music Education at the University of Toronto. So last week I attended the international conference known as RIME: Research in Music Education in the beautiful University of Exeter in England. This was the view from my bedroom window: Besides the tremendous views, I also got a lot out of the conference itself. Now that I am back in Toronto, I find I am left both excited and troubled about the state of music education world-wide. Excited because I saw many presentations that examined a wide… Read More »Reflections on RIME
I just left the ph.d. defense for my capoeira teacher and friend, Lang. Her dissertation on capoeira focuses on how the Afro-Brazilian martial art form is both a powerful site of transformative learning and a challenge to strictly logical/cerebral learning indoctrinated in us in academic institutions. She began defending her thesis this morning by bringing in the whole group and playing in the roda at the beginnning. The University of Toronto is really strict about these things: defenses are not open to the public and we were not allowed to be present during the actual defense. But we were allowed… Read More »confronting the rational with the embodied
Well, that was an incredible 4 days. Up at 4:30 am on Sunday to catch a plane to St. John’s for the Phenomenon of Singing International Symposium VIII, At Memorial University Newfoundland, the academic part of a GI-NORMOUS choral festival called Festival 500. Let me tell you, there really were no downsides to this journey. In fact, I’m not really sure what to say, or where to start. Highlights from the Symposium: Kate Munger, who began Threshold Choirs in California about 10 years ago–groups of women who singing to people who are dying. She was warm, thoughtful and best of… Read More »Phenomenon of Singing in Phenomenal Newfoundland
