World Music Concert in Beijing

It was a great pleasure to direct a world music concert (lecture-recital) last week, for the second time in recent years for the music performance degree students at Beijing Language and Culture University.  

While these students normally focus on performance of Chinese songs on traditional Chinese instruments, for this concert we performed original arrangements of songs from around the world in many different languages and contrasting musical styles: Japan, India, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Brazil, Northern Ireland, Egypt, and Aotearoa/New Zealand.

The audience was quite enthusiastic with our public concert, which was at a modern theatre in Guomao, near the heart of Beijing’s bustling central business district. It is exciting to see how much the students learn from this kind of experience, and I hope to see more projects of this kind in other countries over the coming years.

 

Doctoral Summer School in Hong Kong

Soon I will be taking a group of PhD students from Norway to participate in a summer school event at Education University of Hong Kong: The 2024 International Postgraduate Roundtable and Research Forum cum Summer School, with the theme "Innovations and Sustainability: Shaping Education and Global Futures".

This event includes keynote presentations by professors from Education University of Hong Kong, Lancaster University, University of Auckland, University of Reading, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Michigan State University and Pennsylvania State University.

Our PhD students come from diverse fields including performing arts education, business education, and early childhood education, and have quite interesting dissertation projects.

UPDATE:

Click HERE for more details about IPRRFSS-2024.

 

It was quite interesting to serve as Session Chair for the 2024 summer school’s concluding keynote speeches by Michelle Ming Yue Gu and Mark Levine. Click HERE for more information on the doctoral summer school.

Forthcoming Book on AI and Music Education

It is exciting to be progressing toward completion of a book contracted by Routledge on the topic of AI and philosophy of music education. Jiaxing Xie—probably the most well-known Chinese music educator—is my co-author for this book called A Philosophy of Music Education for the Era of AI: Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Perspectives.

Since both Xie and I are ethnomusicologists as well as music educators with a deep interest in technology, we take an approach that is rather different from most previous writings on the nature and purpose of music teaching and learning. Our book adopts a globally comparative perspective informed by decolonial theory, acknowledging both the opportunities and threats of AI tools for heritage and self-identity. We are making good progress and intend to submit the complete text to the press by the end of 2024 for publication in 2025. Our monograph extends on a series of presentations we gave at various national and international conferences in 2022-2024, including in China and at APSMER and ISME. Hopefully music teachers will be curious to read it.

Displayed above is one of several AI painted images developed by Zhengcui Guo for our book project. 

Singing Maps in Iceland

The Singing Maps project, managed by David Thorarinn Johnson, will soon have a meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland for further development of the project’s activities. Singing Maps is a “trans-Nordic partnership between music educators, researchers, culture bearers and digital designers to support the greater presence of Indigenous and traditional Nordic singing practices in music education.”

The Singing Maps project includes singing researchers and music educators, as well as prominent Sami musicians and Nordic folk singers. This meeting in Reykjavik will be the third project meeting sponsored by Nordforsk as the project seeks other sources of funding and prepares for presentations at ISME and other conferences.

Below is a video developed by filmmaker Ferruccio Goia (at the Medialab of Western Norway University of Applied Sciences) for the Nordic Network for Music Education during the last time I visited Iceland:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfyrO0AH3HA

[The Creative Commons source of the image posted far above is: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vicmontol/541613158]  

Meditative Music Project

It is exciting to now be planning for a studio recording of meditative and ambient music in August as a unique collaboration between shakuhachi/duduk player and ethnomusicologist Jonathan McCollum, the Sympathetic Resonance Trio (comprised of David Hebert, Sergej Tchirkov, and Ole Øvretveit), music therapist Simon Gilbertson, and my PhD student from Uganda, Erisa Walubo. The sound engineer is Hans Martin Austestad. We may also bring our new PhD student Kristian Tverli Iversen (from Bergen) and my old PhD graduate, Tanzanian musician Arnold Chiwalala (from Helsinki) to be part of this project. We aim to develop several music tracks that can be useful for multiple purposes, including meditation, stress-reduction, resilience building, and as a tool for specific therapies.

Our studio project will combine original recordings of local nature sounds with an array of western and non-western musical instruments. Some tracks will feature shakuhachi solos. Brief excerpts will likely be used as background sounds for a resilience-enhancing app being developed through the RESUPERES project, and other recordings may become soundtracks for various video projects and, based on previous studies, as sound stimulus for specific conditions to be relieved through music therapy. The entire project—from the stages of conception and creation to production and reception—will be documented as a piece of collaborative artistic research.

A,  B,  C,  D,  E,  F. 

Chinese Translation of Book Chapters

It was exciting to learn recently that Chinese translations and commentary on chapters from one of my books will soon be published.

 

This is part of a series called Explorations in Music, in a volume about research methods for music, and the chapters are from the book Theory and Method in Historical Ethnomusicology, which received positive reviews in several research journals.

 

The positive reception of that book ultimately led us to develop an entire book series in historical ethnomusicology. Click here for the Deep Soundings book series: https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/_/LEXSHE/The-Lexington-Series-in-Historical-Ethnomusicology:-Deep-Soundings

 

Click here for details about the Chinese translation: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/EeKHi6qsSF7AGVC2-4ZO9Q

 

Shown here are images of the book in English and the Chinese volume with translated chapters and commentary.

 

International PhD Scholars in Bergen

Bergen Summer Research School has attracted more than 100 PhD students from 30 countries around the world for its program of courses, keynotes, and activities in June 2024. 

Although a recent nationwide strike severely disrupted BSRS-2024, causing some course cancellations and sudden teacher substitutions, the strike is now over and most students have managed to fully participate.

Here is a link for the detailed program: https://indd.adobe.com/view/1f359a45-e852-48f6-b04f-5c29218bb204

Here is a link for a press release that describes ongoing activities, including music and events that include the Bergen mayor and the rector (president) of University of Bergen: https://www.uib.no/en/rs/bsrs/171080/hope-science-and-summer-research-school

 

Below is an image from a performance at the nationwide strike, which is finally over. 

UPDATE: I am happy to report that due to the nationwide strike my course Creative Innovations in Higher Education is not actually cancelled, but merely postponed to summer 2025. More information will be posted on the BSRS website by Autumn 2024.