News
Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant
I am fortunate to live in a state that recognizes the impact of the pandemic on the arts. The Massachusetts Cultural Council awarded me a significant grant this spring (2023) to develop Just Listening after it was severely hampered by the lockdowns of the pandemic. I am using the grant to promote and subsidize Just Listening and its related venture, Groundhog Night. Groundhog Night was to be premiered in May 2020, but was delayed until 2022. The significance of that delay is enormous. Already I was turning toward a more experimental manner of composing, and the time that passed allowed me to more fully contemplate the meaning of the piece and what is meaningful to me about making music. I've written about it in my blog, so invite you to read that essay, but in short, it is an environmental statement (subtitle: Hear What the Earth Says), and allows the audience to rate the energy of a repeated passage whose changes on repetition come from audience members. A rather radical reset of relations between composer, performer, and audience, the piece, and indeed the whole package — Just Listening, Groundhog Night, Contemplating Music — arises from my Zen practice and from contemplating the importance of my theory of musical impact, the Sound-Energy Aggregate.
Contemplating Music
During the last year, I have focused much of my creative energy on getting an old blog revived and continuously active. I call it Contemplating Music, and it explores many of the underlying phenomena from which Just Listening grows. Check it out, and please subscribe, leave comments, etc.!
As I am aware of the common foundation for Just Listening, Groundhog Night, and Contemplating Music, I seek to pull them all together under one heading. And though I have not done so yet, one of these days I'll get the websites connected and make it more clear how everything stems from my Zen practice.
As I am aware of the common foundation for Just Listening, Groundhog Night, and Contemplating Music, I seek to pull them all together under one heading. And though I have not done so yet, one of these days I'll get the websites connected and make it more clear how everything stems from my Zen practice.
California tour
In my first trip out of state for Just Listening since the pandemic began, I did a brief tour in the Los Angeles area around Memorial Day 2022. Though schools were mostly done or overwhelmed by year-end goings-on, I managed to put together a couple of iterations of the workshop, one at Housing Works LA, with a group of recently-homed people, and one at a yoga studio in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I'm going out primarily for the premiere of my very unusual piece, Groundhog Night. The piece uses the same energy-assessment process I have developed for use in class visits, with participants rating the energy of the music they have just heard. I have written about it in my blog, here's a link.
Just Listen: The Series expands
I am expanding Just Listen: The Series to include participation in a related study regarding musical energy. This study is a refined version of one I did with a class some years ago for which the data processing has taken forever! Now that I have met another data scientist, I see the opportunity to do the study again as part of a tour (whether in-person or virtual). Read about the first study here. In my last Just Listening tour just before the pandemic, I visited schools in the midwest, including the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa, and participants were highly engaged in just seeing some of the early results. I predicted then that doing the study live with participants to generate even more interest and discussion of musical energy and the questions surrounding it, and this is turning out to be true.
At Fitchburg State University this spring (2022) I did a Just Listening session in one class day and followed it up in the next class day with a short study of musical energy, with students rating the energies of short musical samples and then seeing the result right away. Very engaging, and it led to really thoughtful discussion and insights! Of course this is what I expected but it is so great to see it come true. Later in the spring, I did the just the study of musical energy with a composition class as Wheaton College, and the engagement was equally strong a productive.
At Fitchburg State University this spring (2022) I did a Just Listening session in one class day and followed it up in the next class day with a short study of musical energy, with students rating the energies of short musical samples and then seeing the result right away. Very engaging, and it led to really thoughtful discussion and insights! Of course this is what I expected but it is so great to see it come true. Later in the spring, I did the just the study of musical energy with a composition class as Wheaton College, and the engagement was equally strong a productive.
Just Listen: The Series
(Fall 2021)
I worked out an arrangement with the Longy School of Music of Bard College to make a series of Just Listening workshops available to schools during the pandemic at no charge! Based on a class I have taught at Longy, Just Listen reiterated the process of repeated listening and discussion with a series of musical styles that people (especially people in the classical music world) often have difficulty accepting or liking.
It's unclear whether the financial support of Longy will continue, but the series itself is a definite phenomenon to continue!
(As of summer 2023, the support is gone, but the series may be created at any time!)
I worked out an arrangement with the Longy School of Music of Bard College to make a series of Just Listening workshops available to schools during the pandemic at no charge! Based on a class I have taught at Longy, Just Listen reiterated the process of repeated listening and discussion with a series of musical styles that people (especially people in the classical music world) often have difficulty accepting or liking.
It's unclear whether the financial support of Longy will continue, but the series itself is a definite phenomenon to continue!
(As of summer 2023, the support is gone, but the series may be created at any time!)
ACMHE conference
A version of Just Listening was selected as a parallel presentation at the eleventh annual Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACMHE) conference, "Radical Well-Being in Higher Education: Approaches for Renewal, Justice, and Sustainability". The conference was November 7-11, 2019, and UMass Amherst.
podcast interview
I was recently interviewed by Karen Bulmer for her podcast, Music, Mind and Movement. The discussion ranged from my use of contemplative practices in composition through the development of the analytical procedure which led eventually to Just Listening. You may listen to that interview on Soundcloud, iTunes, or Karen Bulmer's site. I've embedded the Soundcloud version below.