Between now and the end of the year, I hope to share the results of the work that keeps me from writing too much for this blog. I am still writing, just in-progress and behind the scenes pieces that isn’t intended for public consumption. My plan is not linear, but interconnected in a way that makes it hard for me to articulate how they actually fit together. Perhaps I will write about the “eureka” moments that I experience (I have some in mind already from the interviews I’m doing for the Business of Music research). Perhaps from the random posts you will piece together a bigger picture of about what I’m working on.

The present is marked by feelings of excitement and anxiety and also of doubt as to whether I can actually make things happen; all the typical response we experience when we try something new. This feeling is familiar. I felt it on the first day I showed up for classes at the Faculty of Music, the first time I presented a paper at a conference, the first time I had to negotiate my wage. Right now, it also feels like a productive randomness, and I hope once I make some progress, I can look behind me and tell you retroactively what it was I was trying to do.

Until then, I will be busy embracing it.

My trips to the UK for the British Forum of Ethnomusicology is turning into a bit of an annual pilgrimage. The attendees are from all parts of Europe and beyond, and it is three days of ideas, conversations, and mingling with an inspiring group of people. Technology makes reaching out to people around the world much easier, but nothing seems to beat just one face-to-face interaction in terms of establishing rapport, and connecting a voice and a face to a name.

One idea being kicked around as a result of the conference involves looking at the ethics of preserving and ‘returning’ ethnographic research data, as a way to start articulating the different concerns researchers have when deciding what to do with their research data. The common response is, of course they want to share my work, but there are fundamental economic and ethical considerations with no easy solution. Each researcher seem to be dealing with challenges that are specific to their circumstances, but it is probably useful to have a way of conceptualizing the problem into a framework that can be broadly applied. There were also related conversations about how to design a platform to solicit and disseminate research beyond papers, and encourage the use of multimedia in research publication.

Of course, internationally collaborations have their inherent challenges: logistics of time zones and people, objectives from which everyone can benefit, and a timeline that is realistic. Luckily, my first and continuing collaboration of this type with Kiku Day has been extremely rewarding and almost effortless, but as the scope of projects grow and they get more ambitious, I am sure I will encounter more challenges. One of the things I should be doing, is to develop these ideas locally in Toronto, and connect with like-minded folks.

In the mean time, I’m continuing with one-on-one interviews on the business of music topic. I’m getting quite excited about these interviews, as the diversity of paths that musicians have taken in order to make a living, and the variety of skills they have honed in order to achieve it is awe-inspiring.

This project and other professional development activities is going to keep my nose to the grindstone. I have to admit it’s a bit hard to get back into a productivity level that matches my idea-generation level; last spring as the beautiful weather arrived, I was immersed in thesis work. By the same token however, I hate to see good ideas deprived of the attention and effort that they deserve, particular if they are my ideas. Attending BFE definitely re-ignited my passion after a much needed mental break, and it was a reminder to me how important it is to situate yourself in a community, if only for the words of encouragement, and feedback on your own work.

So thank you BFEers, for the muse and for the music!

(Photo from a CBC blog post on unlikely classical music venues, featuring members of the Blythwood Winds.)

Once upon a variety of times in Western history, making a living as a musician was a reasonably straight forward affair. There were employment opportunities at opera houses, concert halls, churches, and schools. There were patrons of the arts who would commission new creations, and publishers who would canonize them. The musical training classical musicians receive today are based on very similar assumptions. That is, there are employment opportunities out there, as long as you are a well trained musician of the western classical tradition.

Today, musicians seem to lament the disappearance of those good old days, and struggle to navigate the latest social media technology that allows them to freely and economically reach out to an audience. They try every free service out there that promises to help them get hired. Some are lucky to have access to that kind of know-how in their network, or just have an intuitive understand of how it works. Others grapple with the proper balance of their time to their musical craft, and improving their bottom line.

Regardless of the era we find ourselves in, the principle of supply and demand will always play a role in how people decide to make a living. Seeing as we no longer live in a world where people go to operas as a pass time, classical trained musicians are hung out to dry with a rude awakening after they graduate; After many years of hedging a bet that they will ‘make it’, they noticed the world is changing quickly, and classical music has a heck of a lot more things to compete with as a pass time, with fewer and fewer secured employment opportunities when performing organizations prefer to stay nimble and flexible. Not that their teachers are addressing these real-life issues—that will be their own problem to solve once they get out there as professionals.

This problem doesn’t apply to just new graduates, it also exists for seasoned musicians who find themselves no longer contenders for the same rare and high-profiled opportunities that established their pedigree, because preferences are given to new names in order to attract an ever new audience that will hopefully turn into life-long patrons. Others are also at a stage in their life where they don’t or can’t move in order to pursue performing opportunities, leaving them the option of starting their own practice as teachers, their own performing ensembles, or perhaps pursue parallel careers in arts administration, or entirely different ones.

These are the kinds of phenomena that makes people proclaim classical music as being dead, and yet it has resisted extinction, I think, because classical music is not an object waiting to be retired, it is a musical practice lived by the people and institutions that are also responding to the rapidly changing landscape of the 21st century. Singers, instrumentalists, soloists, accompanists, chamber musicians, orchestral players, conductors, composers, arrangers and teachers abound, and while each group have unique challenges related to the way their business is changing, there are also overarching themes.

This spring, I am starting a research project to explore this issue further, starting with self-employed musicians in the city of Toronto. There has certainly been recent studies, such as the one done by the Cultural Human Resource Council to name but one, which offers an excellent overview of challenges within the industry for large and small players. In addition to providing training opportunities, however, there is also a need to recognize the innovative solutions at the grassroots level that is emerging in response to these challenges.

As the scope of this study develops, I am engaging musicians in a conversation about what matters to them. By involving them from the very beginning of the research process, I hope the findings will be more relevant for them, and result in a study that will have practical value.

There has been very positive responses in the few conversations I’ve had so far, and I’m looking forward to see how things unfold. If you are interested in this study, do get in touch!

After a serious bout of spring cleaning at the office, the sun peaking out to suggest that days are getting longer, and a few well placed plants, I am getting an injection of inspiration and motivation. A few projects are brewing in my mind, and I’m really looking forward to sharing them with you once they are more presentable. They have to do with ‘music knowledge’ in a general sense, and helping people make connections with each other more specifically. I am looking forward to distilling the projects and ideas into a more refined form through conversations with a variety of people.

One such effort is my trek to attend the British Forum of Ethnomusicology later this month, which will be significantly more relaxed than my previous visits. I won’t be presenting a paper, but Kiku and I will have a ‘digital display’ of our on-going research on the transmission of shakuhachi online, building on what we had presented at the DIY Citizenship conference in Toronto. The next few weeks will be spent reviewing and editing some video footage, and producing the digital presentation and related collateral.

Now, let’s see if I work better with a clean space or a cluttered space.

In order to fill up the post-thesis writing void that I seem to find myself in, I took the time to write a few articles for the Sneak Peek Orchestra talking about the musicians and composers in their recent concert. In retrospect, music criticism or journalism was a passion that I had intended to pursue when I wondered what good was a degree in music history. It is both surprising and wonderful to find an opportunity to pursue it while supporting a wonderful group. The Heliconian Club’s new website is also affording me a chance to do more content development, soliciting and editing content that represents the full range of activities and community initiatives that happen at the club, something that the old site did not reflect at all. A colleague who was in town made a flattering comparison of this work as a kind of ethnography—documenting the stories of people that make up a community or an institution—which was certainly an interesting way to think about what I’m doing.

February is upon us, and all this interviewing and writing has been excellent warm up for pursuing the idea of designing digital tools that can facilitate the processes of music transmission that are happening online. Dabbling in readings on critical pedagogy and knowledge commons has helped me frame my research questions in terms of system design implications, such as copyright, online communities, economic models, and the likes. The challenge is defining the design objective, which is going to be iterative and emergent. In fact, this is probably a good time to finally crack open Embracing Complexity in Design for some inspiration and guidance.

Many roads lead me here, and many others lead from here. Time to re-orient myself and update my maps before continuing on.

(I have been writing, just not for this blog. While those draft posts percolate some more, here’s something I’ve written recently.)

The Toy Piano Composers’ “Opera Scenesters” was a refreshing take on the magical combination of music, voice, props and human drama that can only be found in the operatic form. Over the course of the evening, six operatic miniatures composed by Elisha Denburg, Chirstiain Floisand, Monica Pearce, Glenn James, Fiona Ryan and Chris Thornborrow were performed by Maureen Batt (Soprano), Marta Herman (Soprano) and Jeremy Ludwig (Baritone), accompanied by Wesley Shen on the piano. Erik Thor’s stage direction and props completed the illusion of turning the Heliconian Hall into an opera house. The result was an engaging program that would delight those new to opera and those that “loved opera before it was hip to love opera”.

Co-founded in 2008 by Monica Pearce (also know as Monica Clorey until recently) and Chris Thornborrow, the group gives new composers a whimsical and dynamic space in which to present their work. In particular, Pearce looks up to the way groups such as Tapestry New Opera, Sound Streams, and Sneak Peek Orchestra have taken a more imaginative approach to programming and concert presentations.

“Chris and I had been to a lot of new music concerts, not only now but also while we were studying at the University of Toronto. We both felt that the way new music was being presented could be changed in a way to be more interesting and engaging.”

While you may think that the Toy Piano Composers only write for toy pianos—and they have presented concerts where this instrument is featured—it is more of a nod to composers like John Cage and George Crumb who have used it in their compositions, as well as a reflection of the group’s fun and whimsical attitude when it comes to making new works more accessible to a larger audience.

“We don’t expect people to like every piece, every time, but if they actually come out and enjoy a concert because the name drew them in, hopefully they get a sense of what we’re about and will come back again.”

When planning their 2011-2012 season, the Toy Piano Composers wanted to do a vocal concert. The last time they put up a concert of new vocal works (“Smile: Songs of the Toy Piano Composers”), it was one of their most well-attended concerts. Even though the idea for operatic scenes came up as some of the members had already done similar work during their studies, they all wrote new pieces for this concert. It was an opportunity to try something new with not just music, but also words and drama.

“The word ‘scensters’ was used in order to avoid the seriousness that opera is often perceived to be. We definitely considered having a small ensemble at some point, and we had to make a lot of decisions about the stage direction as well.”

Opera is serious business for anyone that gets themselves involved, be they singers, instrumentalists, composers, designers, directors, and even as audiences. During “Opera Scensters”, many pieces were introduced with an on stage interview conducted by marketing director Tim Crouch, who engaged the composers and librettists in conversation about their pieces. Some of the pieces are deeply personal, and all are rooted in each composer’s experiences of the world. Floisand channeled his love of wordplay and his daily habit of doing crosswords into an endearing scene of reconciled love. Pearce used the opportunity to write a “carthartic” piece based loosely on her experience planning her own wedding last year. Thornborrow recaptures the experience of childhood make-believe games, the perfect opportunity to make music about a giant octopus at sea and kidnappings by zombie pirates.

Mezzo-Soprano Marta Herman and Soprano Maureen Batt were a dynamic duo offering both individually and collaboratively an expressive range of vocal colours and emotions. Batt was equally comfortable playing a sly, sexy con-artist based on the real life story of Kari Ferrell in Denburg’s “The Hipster Grifter”, and an innocent youth serving as the captain on an imaginary ship with Marta as her second mate in Thornborrow’s “Hannah and Paige and the Zombie Pirates”. Herman’s endearing charm drew the audience in as she played the roles of reconciled lover in Floisand’s “Crossword” and a passionate baker in Pearce’s “Cake”. Ludwig was no less capable of conveying both the light and dark sides of human experiences within short operatic scenes, such as the remorseful lover in James’ “Like a Dog” and an eavesdropping blogger in Ryan’s “The Best of ‘Nosey Nate’”. All three performers sang with conviction and flare, with extra credit going to Ludwig for also taking on the role of a female character.

The final concert in the Toy Piano Composers’ 2011-2012 season is coming up on April 28^th, 2012, which is a collaborative venture with new music performers Array Music Chamber Ensemble, led by Artistic Director Rick Sacks. If “Opera Scensters” was any indication, the music written for and performed by this established new music group will not be just another new music concert.

(Photo supplied by Monica Pearce. Photo caption: Maureen Batt and Marta Herman (with teddy bear) in Thornborrow’s “Hannah and Paige and the Zombie Pirates” at Heliconian Hall in Toronto. Wesley Shen can be spotted accompanying on the piano.)

The new year brings a whole new slate of projects and ideas, and a lot of freedom to do things that I may have had to say “no” to because of a packed schedule. To start, I am joining a reading group on critical pedagogy, organized by Michael MacDonald at the University of Alberta Centre for Teaching and Learning. I met him at ICTM this summer, and I really wanted to learn more about his research. The intimate connection between teaching and learning is extremely important to address in any form of online education, but especially music education, broadly speaking. Our first book is Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, and my copy just arrived in the mail. It will be interesting to see what participating in a reading group via skype will be like.

This month I will be working on research proposals and grant applications, and as a result, lots of reading and writing. It is always difficult to anticipate what the future will bring, but you won’t know until you try.

So here’s to diving right in!

There were many first on this trip: plants, animals, landscapes, waters. Even the skies were different. My brain got a total reset, and my mental space was freed up by a total disconnection with any kind of digital media. It’s definitely motivation to draw better boundaries between work and life, in order to enjoy both to the fullest. Engaging in one while worry that the other is being neglected is completely counter-productive, and all it takes to shift the energy is a little mental adjustments. Admittedly, relaxing is not exactly my forté, but you know what they say, practice makes perfect. I better enjoy this before I suddenly find 2012 magically filled up with things to do!

Here’s wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday (whatever it is that you may be celebrating). I hope 2012 will be good to you. See you in the new year!

We had a packed Heliconian Hall, and received overwhelmingly positive response for this format. It showcased all the best that the Sneak Peek Orchestra strives to be in an intimate setting: great musicianship, great music by the masters and our contemporaries, and charming MCs, all of which translate to great fun for our audience.

Below is a video of Kevin and Victor premiering Kevin’s arrange of themes from Harry Potter for 4 hands. A well deserved standing ovation guys, now let’s start prepping for our next orchestral concert on February 4th!

I promptly fell ill once my conference obligations at MobilityShifts wrapped up, which makes me extremely grateful for the fact that all the panels were audio-recorded. They promise that everything will be up about a month after the conference, so I look forward to listening to all the sessions I missed!

Both the panel with my fellow critical making colleagues and the workshop with Kiku Day were instructive as well as inspiring. Questions from the audience during the panel reaffirmed my desire to pursue work in the area of music knowledge transmission and preservation, while the workshop solidified for me a research trajectory to pursue outside of a university setting, as well as connecting researchers with similar interests to share their experiences and pool their resources. Sincerely thanks to everyone that came out, asked good questions, and even bought a PVC shakuhachi by the end of the workshop!

I also contribute a lot of the inspiration to one of the few sessions I did catch, which was Matt Gold’s session on “Open Education: The University and The Commons”. The talking points in his jam packed talk with excellent and practical advice on building an infrastructure for humanities research were invaluable, but what struck me the most was how much of what he was talking about was learned through the process of making it happen in the first place. Yes, there’s theory, such as the immensely useful reference for Ostrom’s work on knowledge as commons, but it was the wisdom from doing or making that he had amassed that made his talk so engaging.

With that, I am curbing the desire to respond to more calls for proposals or papers, and get into a new headspace that recognize that I have to set new priorities and objectives, even though the things that seem familiar to me now were quite new to me just a few years ago. A new kind of self-discipline is required in this transition period as I seek out new institutions and networks within which to situate my work, as well as new media (aside from words) to explore ideas and thoughts.

Nothing is fully worked out yet, but I don’t feel that they need to be. A couple of months of simmering ideas is just what  I need before I start tending to the loose threads and finding out where they will lead me next.