This week we formally established cooperation at the doctoral and postgraduate levels between universities in Norway and Hong Kong.
This was through both signing of a Memorandum of Understanding and the holding of our inaugural joint doctoral symposium. I am grateful for the support of our rektor Gunnar Yttri, vice dean Vegard Fusche Moe and the vice president and dean of the Hong Kong institution, Prof. Sing Kai Lo.
Koji Matsunobu, a highly accomplished scholar who I have known for many years, is the main partner for this project on the Hong Kong side.
UPDATE (Summer 2023):
Click HERE
to access entire demo album with original song arrangements.
UPDATE (Autumn 2023): Sympathetic Resonance Trio has been awarded funding from the Norwegian Barents Secretariat to develop its performance outreach project in Kirkenes, the far Northeast of Norway.
The Sympathetic
Resonance Trio is now making its second demo recording. The latest repertoire
includes songs from an unusually diverse array of genres: a local Norwegian boating
song, a romantic Russian art song (by Glinka), a timeless Bob Dylan tune, a
ritualistic piece by a Sami songwriter, a jazz standard waltz-ballad, and a Ukrainian folk song.
In addition to singing and playing trumpet with this group,
recently I have been developing technique on the cajon, a versatile percussion
instrument from South America that helps to add some additional depth to the trio’s
sound.
Our first
demo recording was made about 9 months ago, so we now have plenty of
material for a full 2-hour set and a full album.
Below is a
sneak preview of one of these songs, a duet performance of Glinka’s art song
(with powerful lyrics by Pushkin), “Ja pomnju chudnoe mgnovenie”:
Painting: Karl
Briullov’s “A Dream of a Girl Before Sunrise”
Laura
Ellestad has produced a very interesting dissertation in the field of historical
ethnomusicology on Norwegian-American fiddling traditions. It is a quite interesting study, and I hope there will be an enthusiastic audience at both her trial lecture and doctoral defense.
This will
be my first time to take part in a doctoral defense at the Norwegian Academy of
Music. I have previously participated in doctoral disputations at two of the
other major Nordic music academies: Malmo Academy of Music (Lund University)
and Sibelius Academy (University of the Arts Helsinki), but each institution has
slightly different procedures.
The Global
Competence Partnership project is fully underway now, and on May 15 we will
host a group of 20 professors, doctoral students, and university leaders from the
Education University of Hong Kong at our campus in Bergen, Norway.
Our visitors
will participate in an MOU signing ceremony (between Rector and Vice President),
and have a shared doctoral symposium with PhD students from Western Norway
University of Applied Sciences.
Below are
links related to the Global Competence Partnership project and its May 15 launch event:
Shown above is a photo taken of curving train tracks, just a ten-minute walk from my home by the lake in Norway. Life often takes us on a curvy path, but eventually we go in the right direction.
