GAME Symposium III (2024)

We are excited to soon be hosting the GAME Symposium III of the Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research group, here in Bergen, Norway (13-15 December, 2024).

Click HERE to access the full 2024 symposium program.

Click HERE to learn more about the GAME research group.

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Participants in 2024 GAME symposium (click on names for details):  

Erisa Walubo, Kristian T. Iversen, Knut Eysturstein, Adam Switala, Marianne Løkke Jakobsen, Matthieu Stepec, Philbert King-yue Li, Le-xuan Zhang, Steinar Sætre, David G. Hebert, Kimmie Sin Yee Ma, Krister Stoor, Elizabeth Anne Oltedal, Solomon Gwerevende, Katarzyna Julia Leikvoll, Stefan Östersjö, Miwa Chiba, David T. Johnson, Odd Torleiv Furnes, Kay Wing-Ki Li,  Koji Matsunobu, Jostein Stalheim, Sergio Garcia-Cuesta, Karan Choudhary, Mikolaj Rykowski, and Knut Jonas Sellevold.

Click HERE to learn about the first GAME symposium.

Inclusion in Music Education

 

Inclusion is a topic of enduring concern in the field of music education since for a variety of reasons different kinds of people and different kinds of music have tended to be excluded from music programs in educational institutions. Recent research aims to produce new insights in this field.

An article co-authored with Miwa Chiba has just been published in the journal Music Education Research (Routledge) that examines policies shaping inclusion in music education through comparison between the nations of Japan and Luxembourg. Click HERE to access the article.

Also, a recent co-authored article in International Journal of Music Education (Sage) addresses the theme of inclusion in higher education music studies by applying decolonial theory for consideration of the longterm experiences of music doctoral students from different continents. Click HERE to access the article.

 

 

RIME conference

RIME 2025: The 14th International Conference for Research in Music Education will be held on 22-25 April, 2025.

The submission deadline is 10 November 2024. It is an entirely online conference and I serve on its Scientific Committee.

Click HERE for more information about RIME.

"The aim of the conference is to gather together researchers, teachers and practitioners to share and discuss research that is concerned with all aspects of teaching and learning in music: musical development, perception and understanding, creativity, learning theory, pedagogy, curriculum design, informal and non formal settings, equity, inclusion, technologies, instrumental teaching, teacher education, professional development, gender and culture. Music education is also viewed in the context of arts education, human geography, cultural sustainability, and knowledge within its sociocultural contexts."

 

Recital: Classic Songs of Boundless Love

I have developed a recital that will be performed in China in late November, then in Norway in early December, 2024. It is in collaboration with a highly skilled Hong Kong-based pianist Dr. Philbert King-yue Li.

Below are a few details about the concept and program for Classic Songs of Boundless Love:  

It has often been said that love knows no boundaries, but today parts of the world are torn by the violence of war. This presentation uses masterful art songs to illustrate shared human values that persist despite conflict. The recent Olympic Games in Paris, France, highlight how diplomacy can triumph, and this selection of classic songs by notable twentieth century composers—in France, the US, Russia, Japan and China—demonstrates a collective sentiment shared worldwide: Whether romantic love, love for an infant, or love of nature and one’s homeland, it is this profound feeling that guides all people toward mutual appreciation and treating each other with compassion and kindness. Dr. Hebert has worked as a music professor in each of the places discussed, and through the lecture connects each song to both cultural history and his personal writings and experiences in each location. 

 

 

PROGRAM of SONGS

• Francis Poulenc (France): “Invocation aux Parques” and “Serenade” 

• Samuel Barber (USA): “Sure on this Shining Night” and “Rain Has Fallen”

• Yoshimatsu Takashi (Japan): Pleiades Dances VI, op.71

• Sergei Rachmaninov (Russia): “Child, You are Beautiful Like a Flower” (Op.8 No.2) and “In the Mysterious Silence of the Night” (Op.4 No.3). 

• Robert Schumann (Germany): Selections from “Kinderszenen”, Op. 15 

• Huang Tzu (China): “Mei Gui San Yuan” (Three Wishes from a Rose) 

• Leung Chi-hin (China): “Thoughts of Separation”

Possible encores: 

• Song of the Yue Boatman (traditional, China)

• Lu Zayi (China): “Wang Xiang Ci” (Musing on My Native Land) 

• Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein: Ol’ Man River (USA)

Biographies:

David G. Hebert, PhD is a full Professor of Music with Western Norway University of Applied Sciences and Honorary Professor with the Education University of Hong Kong. A widely published and cited researcher, he has also held positions with universities in the USA, Finland, Japan, Russia, Brazil, China, Uganda, Faroe Islands, and New Zealand, and has directed research projects on each inhabited continent. He serves on the Executive Council and Board of the International Society for Music Education.

Dr. Hebert’s writings appear in over 30 different professional journals, and he is author or editor of ten books, including such titles as Advancing Music Education in Northern Europe, Teaching World Music in Higher Education, Ethnomusicology and Cultural Diplomacy, Comparative and Decolonial Studies in Philosophy of Education, Theory and Method in Historical Ethnomusicology, and Music Glocalization: Heritage and Innovation in a Digital Age.

 

Dr. Philbert King-yue Li is a Lecturer with the Education University of Hong Kong. A native of Hong Kong, he holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance from Arizona State University in the United States. He has performed at the American Liszt Society Festival and was a prize winner at the 2019 Monegrarte International Piano Competition and 2020 Putra International Piano Competition. Dr. LI has given performances in many countries, including the United States, Russia, Spain, Germany, Belgium, and China, and in early November 2024, he is touring Southeast Asia.

Below are posters from our recent 4-city tour in China: 

Empowering Voices in Aotearoa

It is a pleasure to be returning to Aotearoa New Zealand (where I worked as Head of Music for a Maori college many years ago) to give a presentation in cooperation with Sally Jane Norman, David Thorarinn Johnson, Gene Lai, and Christidis Ioannis at the 48^th ICTMD World Conference 2025. Our Empowering Voices panel presentation is related to a large project on democracy and minority music traditions for which we have sought funding from the EU.

The event where we will present our ideas is organized by the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance, or ICTMD, which is “a scholarly organization which aims to further the study, practice, documentation, preservation, and dissemination of music and dance of all countries (…) As a non-governmental organization in formal consultative relations with UNESCO and by means of its wide international representation and the activities of its Study Groups, the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance acts as a bond among peoples of different cultures and thus contributes to the peace of humankind.”

We look forward to sharing our research and learning what others are doing to support music and dance traditions worldwide. 

Historical Ethnomusicology Series on Bloomsbury

 

The Deep Soundings book series in Historical Ethnomusicology is now on Bloomsbury press, since Lexington Books has become part of the Bloomsbury catalogue.

The series already has four volumes published (displayed above) and three more are under contract:

-Vol. V (forthcoming), by Amy Frishkey, PhD: Navigating Neo-Traditionalism in Garifuna Popular Music 

-Vol. VI (forthcoming), by Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, PhD: The Spanish-Moroccan Musical Brotherhood: Colonial Legacies, Interculturalism and Cultural Memory across the Strait of Gibraltor  

-Vol. VII (forthcoming), by Jeffrey van den Scott, PhD: Sounding North: Inuit in the Canadian Musical Landscape   

Click HERE, HERE and HERE for further information about the series.

 

Historical Ethnomusicology Section

It is a pleasure to report that I have recently been elected Secretary and Incoming Chair for the Historical Ethnomusicology Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology. In close collaboration with the current Chair Otto Stuparitz (University of Amsterdam), there are several goals that I expect we can achieve for further development of the Section.   

SEM explains its sections as follows: “Sections support large areas of professional interest within the Society membership. Sections elect their own officers and in some cases collect nominal dues on a voluntary basis.”

Around 15 years ago I briefly served as Chair of the Historical Ethnomusicology SIG and later helped to develop the application along with Jon McCollum for it to become a Section. Our work in this milieu led to development of the Deep Soundings book series and other projects. 

Now I especially see potential in establishing collaborations between the Section and its equivalents in various sister organizations with shared interests in global music history (e.g. ICTMD Historical Sources SIG, ISME History Standing Committee, IMS Global History of Music Study Group, Analytical Approaches to World Music-AAWM, etc.).

It will be exciting to see what the Historical Ethnomusicology Section can accomplish over the next few years.