What a pleasure to have my music and research featured on CBC’s In Concert: Revelation Hour with Paolo Pietropaolo. All the more so because it is even possible to listen to the episode outside Canada! Thank you to the CBC, and to all the musicians featured playing my music, including Jennifer King, the Elizabeth Bishop Chamber Players, and more.
Madrigirls is a fantastic women’s choir in Glasgow, founded and directed by Katy Lavinia Cooper, and really enjoyed having the opportunity to write a new piece for their 2020 Advent Concert, to help celebrate their 20th anniversary. Due to covid the concert couldn’t take place in person, but I am so pleased that they were able to find a beautiful way to present it online! (You should really watch the whole thing, but if you are looking for my piece specifically, it’s at 1:02:40ish.)
Programme note:
My Wren-King uses lyrics from the St Stephen’s Day tradition of hunting the wren, which is celebrated in various different ways in Ireland, the UK and other Celtic-influenced parts of Europe, and even in some parts of Canada, including Nova Scotia where I am from (though I have never seen it). Traditionally people would kill a wren and bring it from door to door asking for change, though people now use toy wrens, fortunately! There are a variety of theories about the origin of the custom, but it is thought to date from pre-Christian times, or to be a Christianization of Celtic and/or Norse
customs, perhaps replacing a solstice sacrifice. I myself come from a mixed religious background, and although I’m an enthusiastic celebrator of Christmas, I’m not Christian: I thus find myself particularly interested in these customs of somewhat mysterious, mixed origins, associated with the
celebration of Christmas, but not actually connected to the Christmas story itself. I feel a further connection with wren mythology because many folk stories that are told about the wren in Europe have been transposed onto one of my favourite birds, the hermit thrush, when told in North America.
I’m so deeply disappointed in this article series by the Guardian that I don’t even know where to begin. How could they possibly think that, right in the midst of Black Lives Matter, and at a time when many living musicians are having to sell their instruments to survive because there is so little support for artists during covid, that a series featuring the music of 14 dead white male composers, and 0 composers who are non-white, non-male, and/or non-dead, is exactly what people need? When I wrote to express my disappointment with the content of the series, I was told that it had to be all dead white men because it was a series aimed at beginners, and not at a musicologist such as myself. I am not actually a musicologist, but I do write for academic and non-academic contexts, and I know that it’s no harder to write an introductory article about Clara Schumann than it is about Robert (and indeed, no harder to write a specialist article about Robert than it is about Clara). I love many – most, even – of the composers included in the canon, but I can’t believe that there are still people out there who think there’s anything immutable, timeless, or objective about which composers are included. Lists of the “most influential” or “best known” XYZ are never simply neutral accounts of historical fact. They reflect which information has been preserved and which has been forgotten, as well as whatever lens the list-maker sees history through (and this lens is very likely to be affected by both historical and contemporary biases and prejudices). Even more dangerously, they help determine who is going to continue to be “most influential” or “best known” XYZ in the future (whether or not this is the list-maker’s intent). I’m not against making lists: they can be helpful for developing shared bodies of knowledge for enjoyment or discussion, and they can be fun! But from now on I’m going to refer to the Classical Music™ canon as the Classical Music Listicle, as a reminder that any list of the most important, best, and/or best-known composers is inherently subjective, context-dependent, and a bit silly.
Here’s a post I wrote for the RCS Green Room blog about being an artist and academic during covid-19 lockdown. (And while you’re there, please read the blog posts by my wonderful colleagues as well!)
I’m so excited to have joined the board of the Canadian New Music Network as a Non-Regional Representative. I’m looking forward to working with everyone on the board, on behalf of new music in and out of Canada. More information can be found here.
Welcome to my new website! (Thanks Olivier Grascoeur!) Most of the content from the old site is still here, but it should be easier to find, and there is more added. Feedback (positive or negative) is always welcome!
