Field Notes

ECM Field Notes Archive

November 16, 2023. I’m just off a three week residency at MacDowell, and it was nothing short of transformational. As I post this it’s exactly one month since I left, yet part of me remains in that magical place. The process of transitioning from “leaving part of myself behind at MacDowell” to “bringing MacDowell back with me into my daily life” is ongoing...and complex. So this is an unusual “Field Notes”...

April 25, 2023. On April 12, we here at The University of Colorado-Boulder had our New Venture Challenge Championships, the culminating event in a year-long initiative to support entrepreneurship on campus...

January 24, 2023. A month or so ago I posted the first part of two-part edition of “Field Notes” in which I began contemplating what’s next for the performing arts industry...

November 15, 2022. The other day I read the latest research on the effects of the Chicxulub asteroid that crashed into Earth approx. 66 million years ago...

October 11, 2021. Two weeks ago the CU-Boulder College of Music officially opened its new wing to the Warner Imig Music Building, a 50,000 square-foot addition that houses rehearsal spaces, studios, classrooms, a wellness studio...

May 18, 2021. It was 1:00 am and my body did not appreciate the chiming of my alarm waking me up out of a deep sleep...

February, 23 2021. A critical component of our nation’s recovery from the pandemic – both economically and socially – will be to fund a significant bail-out of our arts and culture industries...

January 16, 2021. In 2008, the Federal government deemed an $83 billion bailout of the automotive industry essential to stabilizing an economy in freefall. And they were right: the plan...

"I honestly don't know how we come out of this. If I were a student again I'd be leaving music school to do something else." My colleague sighed, a look of utter defeat on her face. "What do I tell these kids about their future?" I didn't have a good answer for her...

October 27, 2020. The spring semester was to have seen us launch the first-ever Lullaby Project in a collegiate setting. (You can learn more about the Lullaby Project and its history .) In partnership with the Crown Wellness Institute here at CU we would...

Feb. 11, 2020. Say the word “team” to me and the first thing I’m likely to think of is getting picked last in gym class when teams were being chosen, and inevitably hearing a whining sigh along the lines of, “Oh [expletive]! Not Nytch.” This would usually be followed by my justifying their disappointment...

January 15, 2020. After a lovely Winter Break I was kicking off the New Year with a trip to a conference I hadn’t been to in a while, the annual meeting of The United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE), North America’s leading organization for entrepreneurship in higher education. I’d had two presentations accepted and was...

December 3, 2019. Two weeks back the ECM sponsored an event called Nour•ish, a local installment of a nationwide initiative to find common ground among disparate groups and build community through humanity’s two great unifiers: music and food. The brainchild of my colleague...

November 12, 2019. Back in October I had the privilege of hosting Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble (“PNME”) for a joint residency at the CU College of Music and Boulder’s Dairy Arts Center. There were many reasons why one would want to host this group. For starters, PNME is the oldest continuously-operating professional new music ensemble in the country, having premiered over 300 new works by...

October 12, 2019. Greetings and welcome to a new publication from the Entrepreneurship Center for Music at CU-Boulder! For some time I’ve been wondering about how best to communicate not just the activities of the ECM, our students, and our graduates, but also to discuss issues in the field of arts entrepreneurship education, the Boulder entrepreneurial ecosystem, and my...