(In summary? Busy. Next blog.)

January arrived with a bang as I adjusted back to the non-holiday schedules. As you have noticed, I haven’t posted much in that month, and what I did post had more to do with my school assignments than anything interesting to share. I attribute that to the extremely successful SPO concert that ate up a lot of my time (but provided a lot of reading opportunities during rehearsal), the reading heavy courses I am taking (Research methods and a reading course on knowledge organization and classification), and the consultation projects that requires more reading and writing. It honestly doesn’t leave much time to sit and reflect during my day, so the blog has been a little slow. Many exciting things are under way, but I’ll save my time and energy into actually working on them. Instead, here are a few noteworthy events that you might be interested in as well:

My KMDI talk: Music as Embodied Knowledge
February 24th, 4-5pm. Bahen Centre (40 St. George St.) Rm. 7231

In preparation for my talk in Oxford in April, I’ll be giving a version of my talk at the Bahen Centre. This is rather exciting, as I get to test out my ideas to a broad audience, and refine my presentation based on feedback. I hope to draw a at least a few audiences from the Faculty of Music.

Talk Description: Much research has been done in the field of information seeking behaviour, information retrieval, information architecture and system design to facilitate the sharing of musical content. With all the advances in the field, there remains an emerging research area, namely, how musical knowledge is being renegotiated in the information age. In this presentation, the preliminary results of a pilot ethnographic study will be presented in the context of multiple disciplines such as information science, ethnomusicology, music education and knowledge media design, highlighting a rich area for innovative interdisciplinary collaboration.

Allan Collins on “Rethinking Education in The Age of Technology”
February 11th, 3:30-5:30 p.m. Bahen Centre (40 St. George St.) Rm. 7256

This talk is highly relevant to my research and design interests, and I hope it will have actual substance instead of a general ‘call to arms’. (Excerpt) “New technologies create learning opportunities that challenge traditional schools and colleges. These new learning niches enable people of all ages to pursue learning on their own terms. People around the world are taking their education out of school into homes, libraries, Internet cafes, and workplaces, where they can decide what they want to learn, when they want to learn, and how they want to learn. We are beginning to rethink the nature of learning, motivation, and what is important to learn. These changes demand a new kind of educational leadership and changing roles for government. New leaders will need to understand the affordances of the new technologies, and have a vision for education that will bring the new resources to everyone.”

Heliconian Club
February 16th, 6:30-8:30pm, Heliconian Club ($25)

Nancy Butler has been Chief Librarian at the Shaw Festival since 1982. She will be speaking about the experience traversing between the library and the stage, as well as her work as a painter and operator of an art institute in Niagara-on-the-Lake at the Heliconian Club. Reservations are required by Thursday Febraury 11th so get in touch! I’d like to go myself as a chance to meet more of the non-music members of the club, and I am always curious about the work of any domain-specific librarian.

Yannick Nezet-Sequin with the Rotterdam Orchestra
March 24th, 8pm. TSO season at Roy Thompson Hall

I’ve had a music nerd crush on Yannick since he swept me off my feet one snowy valentine’s day. Gergiev was delayed by a snow storm as he was coming from NY, Yannick was in town conducting Faust at the COC, and he was swept over during an intermission to take over a program of Debussy and Ravel I believe. I was completely blown away by the rendition of the Debussy, finally awakening to the fact that Debussy’s music isn’t actually boring, it just takes a different set of musical skills to actually draw out its beauty. He’s back in town with his current orchestra, saves me a trip to Rotterdam!