New Musical Knowledge

The coming month brings many interesting conferences and events that are likely to contribute substantial new knowledge to the field of music. It is exciting to have the opportunity to take part in such innovative projects, but it is going to be a very busy time.

First, it is great to see that my doctoral students continue to make great progress toward completion of their degrees:

• On April 16, Deanna Frith Weber will defend her doctoral dissertation at Boston University, Albany’s Freedom Singers: Their History and Legacy for Music Education. This is a very interesting study of the history and continuing influence of the American Civil Rights movement’s “Freedom Singers”, who were recently invited to give a performance at the White House for President Obama. I am serving as the second reader for Deanna’s dissertation, with Richard Bunbury as the Supervisor.

• Other students for whom I am serving as a dissertation reader are also making outstanding progress. On Friday, Albi Odendaal (Sibelius Academy) gave a fine presentation of some very early work on his dissertation, The Effect of Perceptual Learning Style Preference on Memorisation in Music, which has benefitted greatly from the guidance of Professor Harald Jorgensen (Norwegian Academy of Music).
  
• Also, both Joseph M. Pignato and Michael Simmons (at Boston University) are nearing completion of their research writing, and appear to be headed toward a dissertation defense in late spring of this year.
  
• Sami Alanne (Sibelius Academy), whose study is entitled Music Psychotherapy with Refugee Survivors of Torture: Interpretations of Three Clinical Case Studies, also looks likely to finish this year, and we are quite fortunate to have recently obtained some valuable insights from Professor Kai Karma regarding the methodology of Sami’s study.
  

Soon my course on Music and Social Theory will start at Sibelius Academy, and I have been preparing the lectures for that and anticipate some very interesting discussions with students.

We are also soon reviewing applications and scheduling auditions for the new Master of Global Music (GLOMAS) degree, which will be offered in partnership between higher education institutions in three European nations. I will be traveling briefly to Sweden and Denmark in April for the GLOMAS auditions.


There are also some upcoming research presentations:

• I have been invited to participate as a Discussant (by videoconference) in the symposium Music as a Live Process: Mind, Culture and Esthetics Experience, at the Center for Social Science Research, State University of New York (SUNY), Oneonta [http://www.oneonta.edu/academics/ssr/] (March 16, 2010). Click HERE to download a poster for this event.

• Also, I am excited to be chairing a session "Change and Stability, Music Culture in Southern Ostrobothnia" and presenting a paper entitled "Whither Hypermusicology?: Ethical and Epistemological Issues in Historical Ethnomusicology" for Musicology in the Third Millennium, an international symposium in Seinajoki, Finland (March 18, 2010).

• Soon afterward, I will be giving a guest lecture on "Musical Embodiment and Gesture in Cross-Cultural Perspective" for the intensive Master course "Music, Meaning, and Gesture", offered to students from several different European institutions by the Nordic Network for the Integration of Music Informatics, Performance, and Aesthetics (NNIMIPA) at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark (March 22-25, 2010).

• I have recently been asked by the musicology department of University of Helsinki to lecture on music in Japan this June, which will coincide with the 20^th anniversary symposium of the International Society for Philosophy of Music Education (ISPME) (June 9-13, 2010), for which I reviewed paper submissions.

• Also, it was a great pleasure to hear that my three group and individual proposals to the International Society for Music Education conference (in Beijing, China) were accepted. I very much look forward to meeting with Chinese colleagues there, as well as delegates from many other nations. Soon, I will be meeting with colleagues to plan our symposia for this event. Here is what I plan to be doing at that conference:

1) Chair, Symposium: International Perspectives on the Teaching of Keyboard Improvisation, 29^th World Conference of the International Society for Music Education (ISME), Beijing, China (August 1-6, 2010) [with representatives from Finland, Germany, USA].

2) Chair and paper presentation, Symposium: Harmonizing Hemispheres – Positioning African Music in the Curriculum, 29^th World Conference of the International Society for Music Education (ISME), Beijing, China (August 1-6, 2010) [with representatives from South Africa, Finland, USA].

3) Paper presentation, “On the Musical Instrument Industry and Music Education in Japan”, 29^th World Conference of the International Society for Music Education (ISME), Beijing, China (August 1-6, 2010).

In April and May, I must once again focus on finishing my books, and it will be very interesting to see what life brings in the Autumn.