Theory

A harmonious blend of music + film: November residency with Alicia Svigals, Donald Sosin

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 02:39:07 +0000

A harmonious blend of music + film: November residency with Alicia Svigals, Donald Sosin Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/02/2023 - 20:39

College of Music

In a collaboration among the CU Boulder College of Music and Program in Jewish Studies—as well as the Boulder Jewish Film Festival, Boulder Jewish Community Center and Congregation Har HaShem—renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and celebrated silent film pianist Donald Sosin will present a “cine-concert” as part of a three-day residency, Nov. 7-9.

A “cine-concert” is a unique experience where a silent film comes to life with live music, all composed and performed by Svigals and Sosin. This main residency event—“The Man Without A World”—will be held Thursday, Nov. 9, at 6:30 p.m. at the Dairy Arts Center.

The residency includes two additional public events:

Tuesday, Nov. 7, 7:30 p.m.: Community klezmer workshop with Svigals at Congregation Har HaShem.
Wednesday, Nov. 8, 7:30 p.m.: CU Boulder SoundWorks will present Svigals and Sosin on a program including two of Svigals’ works arranged by composition alumnus Max Wolpert, and featuring an ensemble of CU Boulder string players directed by graduate student Enion Pelta-Tiller … and more.

As part of their residency, Svigals and Sosin will further present lectures, demonstrations and workshops for our string studios and composition seminar, and the Music in Jewish Cultures and Musical Styles & Ideas courses.

Svigals is returning to Boulder following several previous visits, including a 2017 screening of the silent film “The Yellow Ticket” with live music composed and performed by herself and pianist Marily Lerner; and the 2019 Archive Transformed residency, which included performances with Associate Professor of Music Theory Yonatan Malin and jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer, led by the late Professor of History and Jewish Studies David Shneer.

Violinist/composer Svigals is the world’s leading klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics. She has performed with and written for violinist Itzhak Perlman and has worked with the Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Debbie Friedman and Chava Albershteyn. Her newest CD—“Beregovski Suite: Klezmer Reimagined” with jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer—is an original take on long-lost Jewish music from Ukraine.

Pianist/composer Sosin received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Denver Silent Film Festival and the Best Original Film Score award from the 2022 Mystic Film Festival. He has performed his scores for silent films—often with his wife, singer/percussionist Joanna Seaton—at Lincoln Center, MoMA, BAM and the National Gallery; and at major film festivals in New York, San Francisco, Telluride, Hollywood, Yorkshire, Pordenone, Bologna, Shanghai, Bangkok, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow and Jecheon, South Korea … as well as many college campuses. Sosin has worked with Alexander Payne, Isabella Rossellini, Dick Hyman, Jonathan Tunick, Comden and Green, Martin Charnin, Mitch Leigh and Cy Coleman, and has played for Mikhael Baryshnikov, Mary Travers, Marni Nixon, Howie Mandel, Geula Gill and others.

Supported by the Roser Visiting Artist Program and the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts.

In a campus and community collaboration, we’re looking forward to an exciting residency featuring two outstanding artists–renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and celebrated silent film pianist Donald Sosin.

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College collaborates to present CU Bernstein at 100

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 13:50:33 +0000

College collaborates to present CU Bernstein at 100 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/22/2018 - 07:50

Jessie Bauters

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_J-aQhs5WM&feature=youtu.be]

CU’s contribution to the worldwide celebration of the composer will feature concerts from all corners of the college and culminate with Eklund Opera’s “West Side Story.” Photos courtesy the Leonard Bernstein office.

As 20th century American composers go, only a handful of names rise to the level of a Mozart or Beethoven for those outside the classical music world. This fall, the College of Music joins a worldwide celebration of one of them as it puts on CU Bernstein at 100.

“It’s an opportunity to celebrate American music, music education and humanitarianism through music and the arts.”

Professor of Piano Andrew Cooperstock is organizing this coming together in the name of Leonard Bernstein. Most well known as the composer of the timeless musicals “West Side Story” and “Candide,” Bernstein was also a conductor—most famously leading the New York Philharmonic for 40 years—an educator, a humanitarian and a writer.

Bernstein, the icon

Born in Massachusetts in 1918, Leonard Bernstein began his prolific career taking piano lessons as a boy. After graduating from Harvard, he soon became a musical force to be reckoned with, conducting ensembles around the world and composing dozens of jazz numbers, symphonies, solo piano works and more from the 1940s until his death in 1990.

Cooperstock—who released the first recording of Bernstein’s complete solo piano works last year—says first and foremost, Bernstein was a communicator. “Through being a soloist, conductor, writer, speaker, television personality or lecturer, he was communicating his ideas through music. And to me that’s what music is all about.”

During a time when the influence of the 19th century European romantics still dominated new music, Cooperstock says Bernstein was one of the few composers in the U.S. to search for a truly American voice.

“Gershwin, Copland and Bernstein were using folk, gospel, jazz, the wide-open spaces of the West and the streets of New York to create really American scenes, and I find that fascinating,” Cooperstock explains. “They experimented with different styles—some more popular, some more serious—to create something unique.”

Bernstein also made it a priority to support young musicians and composers, pioneering his illustrative Young People’s Concerts to open children’s eyes to music through interactive, televised performances with the New York Philharmonic. This could perhaps be why, nearly 30 years after his death, his impact is still felt in the hundreds of music halls around the world showcasing Bernstein’s music this year.

Bernstein 100 years later

CU Bernstein at 100 brings together the College of Music, the Program in Jewish Studies and the Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts for several weeks of concerts, panel discussions and film screenings. Headlining the event are three visitors with unique perspectives on the composer’s life: Bernstein scholar and Harvard University musicologist Carol Oja, former New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and Bernstein’s daughter, Jamie.

“The events at CU Boulder perfectly demonstrate how the Leonard Bernstein at 100 festivities are bringing Bernstein right into the student community,” says Jamie Bernstein, who recently published a book, “Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein.”

She continues, “This is one of so many ways that young people can discover my father's multifaceted gifts to the world: his musical compositions, from the concert hall to Broadway and beyond; his recordings and videos as a world-class conductor; his celebrated role as ‘America's music teacher’ and his lifelong work as an activist trying however he could to make the world a better place. I hope that after this exciting week of activities, CU Boulder will have turned into one big Bernstein fan club!”

Bernstein, Oja and Dicterow will be in Boulder the final week of September, beginning with a colloquium moderated by the new director of the American Music Research Center, Susan Thomas, on Sept. 24. The following evening, Jamie Bernstein hosts a special Faculty Tuesday performance of her father’s chamber music, and on Thursday, Sept. 27, she will narrate a CU Symphony Orchestra concert featuring a guest performance by Dicterow.

A few weeks later, CU Bernstein at 100 wraps up with a film screening of “West Side Story,” accompanied by a panel discussion with Eklund Opera Program Director Leigh Holman and Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts Director Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz, and Eklund Opera’s production of “West Side Story.” Cooperstock says it’s fitting to cap off the festival with the classic retelling of “Romeo and Juliet” set in 1950s New York.

“It brings together all aspects of Bernstein. The music, the story, the social aspects,” he says.

Virtually every corner of the College of Music will program Bernstein’s works during September and October; to view a full list of events—including the kickoff CU on the Weekend talk presented by the Music Theory area on Saturday, Sept. 8—visit cupresents.org.

Bernstein, the inspiration

For Cooperstock, orchestrating CU Bernstein at 100 has become a personal tribute to the formative impact the icon had on his own musical journey.

“I’ve been familiar with his music my whole life. He lived during my time and he was from my country and I feel like I can relate well to his music. His music expresses something about culture and humanity.”

And as the College of Music prepares to celebrate its own 100th birthday in 2020, Cooperstock says the college-wide celebration of Bernstein’s centennial comes at a perfect time.

“As we consider the purpose of music education going forward, there’s no better musical figure than Bernstein to urge us to think about the importance of the arts. I also feel like one of Bernstein’s missions was to bring people together, and that’s my vision for this festival.”

CU’s contribution to the worldwide celebration of the composer will feature concerts from all corners of the college and culminate with Eklund Opera’s “West Side Story.”

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CU on the Weekend music series continues with a modernist bent

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 17:10:01 +0000

CU on the Weekend music series continues with a modernist bent Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/13/2017 - 11:10

Jessie Bauters

Daphne Leong hosts the first CU on the Weekend of the year on Saturday, Sept. 30.

The College of Music’s yearly collaboration with the CU Office for Outreach and Engagement’s CU on the Weekend series continues this fall, and this time the college opens the season.

Since 2015, the Theory department has hosted “Musical Conversations,” a discussion of the why and how of music that started with “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and continued last year with George Crumb and an exploration of his musical depiction of grief. On Saturday, Sept. 30, Associate Professor of Theory Daphne Leong brings yet another approach to the eye-opening and popular series.

“My talk will focus on modernism and the way it challenged the arts, especially music,” says Leong. “I’ll be interacting with the audience and asking them what they’re hearing, drawing out their insights.”

The talk, aptly titled “What do you hear? Listening to modernist music,” will provide the audience with examples of modernist music—works by Bartók, Schoenberg, Webern and others—and delve into how the aesthetic changed pitch organization, types of sound and the shaping of musical time.

Leong says though the musical styles that grew out of modernism—such as serialist, minimalist and textural—can seem like a different language entirely from the music most people are used to, we’re often more adept at gleaning meaning from such pieces than we may think.

“People can often dismiss their reactions to music like this because they think they don’t know anything about it. But really, there is a lot that they know intuitively, and it’s exciting to explore these intuitions.”

Throughout the talk, Leong will play music and couple it with discussion. The multimedia presentation ends with a performance: Leong’s quartet of College of Music faculty and alumni, Throw Down or Shut Up!, performs their namesake piece, written by Vineet Shende, along with another secret work.

“We want to keep the second piece a mystery, so that the audience can discover it along with us that day.”

The “Musical Conversations” series has proven popular with the Boulder community. The first two presentations were standing room only. Leong suspects the reason for its popularity is simple: People like learning about subjects that are brand new to them. “Music is such a natural part of people’s lives. If you can experience it in a richer way, then that’s rewarding.”

That’s why she’s focusing her talk on more contemporary—and sometimes unfamiliar—music.

“We’re living in the 21st century. Music from the 18th century is wonderful, but there are new adventures to explore now. Opening our ears to music of the 20th and 21st centuries can bring unexpected discoveries to our hearing of older music.”

“What do you hear? Listening to modernist music” is Saturday, Sept. 30, at 1 p.m. in the Chamber Hall. Seating is limited to the first 115 people. Doors open at 12:30 p.m.; advance registration is not required. For more information, visit the CU on the Weekend website.

Daphne Leong opens the CU on the Weekend series on Sept. 30.

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CU at the Dairy: new partnership launches Sept. 7

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:59:47 +0000

CU at the Dairy: new partnership launches Sept. 7 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/16/2017 - 08:59

Jessie Bauters

A new cross-town collaboration is giving College of Music faculty an opportunity to broaden their horizons and share their art with the greater Boulder community.

This fall, the Dairy Arts Center and the College of Music launch CU at the Dairy. The new performance series features CU Boulder music faculty in concert at the Dairy’s Gordon Gamm Theater. The venue offers different ways for faculty performers to explore their craft, collaborate with other local artists and engage with audiences.

“The amazing faculty at CU have such great ideas and projects they want to present,” says Sharon Park, Dairy Center music curator and 2017 doctoral graduate of the College of Music. “The Gordon gives them an intimate venue to pair visual art, silent film, dance or any other art form with music.”

Pianist David Korevaar

The series kicks off Sept. 7 with “Miraculous Mozart,” an evening with Helen and Peter Weil Professor of Piano David Korevaar. Assistant Professor of Violin Charles Wetherbee and other College of Music faculty and alumni will join Korevaar on stage for Mozart’s 14th and 15th piano concertos as the audience gets a bird’s-eye view of the open piano.

“This is an opportunity to bring to Boulder something I’ve only done abroad, which is conducting and playing with a chamber orchestra,” Korevaar says. “I’m excited to be a part of the first CU at the Dairy event; it’s fun to see the Dairy ‘growing up’ and taking its place as a performing arts venue in our town. I also hope this introduces more people to the excellence at the College of Music.”

Theory professor Yonatan Malin

Then, on Sept. 15, Associate Professor of Theory Yonatan Malin hosts a multimedia event in collaboration with the college’s violin studios and CU’s Program in Jewish Studies and International Film Series. “The Yellow Ticket” features a rare 1918 silent film about a young Jewish woman studying medicine in Tsarist 91��Ƭ��. Klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and jazz pianist Marilyn Lerner perform the original score live, and Malin leads a panel discussion with the performers and CU faculty members about film, music and cultural awareness.

“The partnership with the Dairy is perfect for the screening of ‘The Yellow Ticket’ because it is of interest to CU students and faculty and the community at large,” Malin explains. “This project is already a partnership between the College of Music, the Program in Jewish Studies and the International Film Series at CU Boulder, so making it widely available and accessible for community members makes perfect sense.”

For the College of Music, these first two events are only the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Says Dean Robert Shay, “It's my belief that such collaborations strengthen all partners and generally help raise the visibility for the arts in our community. In a sense, we're all in this together, working to find new audiences for what we do.”

“The arts have this power to engage people in important conversations, find an outlet to escape reality and even heal,” Park adds. “By building this bridge between the university and the community, we are helping create a ripple effect of awareness of the role music plays in our society.”

The series will continue with a performance by Thompson Jazz Studies Director John Gunther and friends in the spring. For more information about CU at the Dairy and to purchase tickets, call the Dairy Center box office at 303-444-7328 or visit the Dairy Center’s website.

A new cross-town collaboration is giving College of Music faculty an opportunity to broaden their horizons and share their art with the greater Boulder community.

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Crumb, Whitman and the journey of grief

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:40:00 +0000

Crumb, Whitman and the journey of grief Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/07/2016 - 09:40

Jessie Bauters

If you’ve ever been intimidated by the very idea of “music theory,” then you’re not alone. And if even a musician can get a little nervous at the thought of analyzing chromatic harmony or melodic structure, think about how the casual listener might feel.

But the study of the why and the how of music doesn’t have to be daunting. At the end of the day, those are the very elements that make any piece of music enjoyable at some level to any of us. That’s why the music theory department is participating in the CU Boulder Office for Outreach and Engagement’s CU on the Weekend series.

“Music has profoundly affected my life, and music is an essential part of most people’s lives ,” says Steven Bruns, associate professor of music theory and the presenter as CU on the Weekend returns to the College of Music for the third time on Saturday. “Music speaks to each person very directly, but in ways that can be hard to quantify; music theory provides tools for sorting through the richness and complexity of musical expression.”

During the free presentation and musical performance, Bruns, who is also associate dean for graduate studies at the college, delves into George Crumb’s “Apparition, Elegiac Songs and Vocalises for Soprano and Amplified Piano,” along with pianist Alexandra Nguyen and mezzo soprano Abigail Nims.

“Apparition” is one of Crumb’s most powerful and moving works: the words are drawn from Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” The poem deals with the overwhelming nature of death and was written as an elegy for President Abraham Lincoln shortly after his assassination.

Crumb was first inspired by the profound piece when he was growing up in West Virginia. “In the composer’s unpublished sketches, I discovered two unfinished musical settings of portions of the ‘Lilacs’ elegy dating from George’s teenage years,” Bruns explains.

“He had been thinking about these words for a very long time. Even when he returned to the poem in his fifties, his sketches show that he struggled to find the ideal musical expression.”

Crumb was drawn to the text and what it implied about the power of music.

“One of the things that’s really interesting and attractive about the poem—which is considered by many to be the among the greatest of all American poems—is that Whitman at several points seems to say, ‘I don’t know how I can find words that are adequate to express the depth of my grief,’” Bruns says.

“Crumb intensifies the sonorous qualities of the words, helping us to hear how Whitman is ‘musicalizing’ the language even more than usual,” Bruns says. “It’s Whitman’s way of saying that mere words can’t express a sense of loss—only music can do that.”

Whitman’s poem follows a mourner on a journey from bewilderment to understanding as he deals with the various stages of loss. Guiding that journey is a hermit thrush—a small songbird that Bruns says serves as an oracle throughout.

“When we arrive at that acceptance, during the thrush’s ‘Death Carol,’ the bird is telling us what this all means. Almost all of Crumb’s text comes from that part of the poem.”

Musically, the story begins and ends in a mysterious place, shaped by ebbs and flows in the piano and notated in a characteristically Crumbian way. Additionally, throughout the piece, the singer plays the part of the clairvoyant hermit thrush. All this will be revealed by Bruns’ music theory, Nims’ singing and Nguyen’s piano playing.

“By telling this story in context, we want to heighten the audience’s appreciation of the music and invite them into a world they might not have visited before. I’m confident that people will have a strong emotional reaction to this piece.”

The talk will also be a chance for locals to learn more about Crumb, who began his teaching career as a faculty member in the College of Music from 1959–64. Bruns has lectured and published several writings on Crumb and is teaching a graduate seminar on his body of work this semester.

“A Musical Exploration of Grief Beyond Words” is Saturday, Nov. 12, at 1 p.m. in the Chamber Hall. Seating is free, but because room is limited to the first 115 people, tickets are required. Tickets will be distributed starting at noon, and doors open at 12:30 p.m. For more information, visit the CU on the Weekend website.

This Saturday, Steven Bruns, Abigail Nims and Alexandra Nguyen present "A Musical Exploration of Grief Beyond Words" as part of the CU on the Weekend series.

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Update: dissecting German Lieder

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 07:00:00 +0000

Update: dissecting German Lieder Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/12/2015 - 00:00

Jessie Bauters

Jordan Pyle presents her group's findings on the music of Franz Schubert during the College of Music Scholarship Celebration and Dinner on Oct. 5.

The search for the “why” in a handful of Schubert Lieder is picking up steam for Jordan Pyle and Kris Shaffer. After a summer of encoding, translating and re-encoding, the project begun back in May with a music theorist in Oregon and a recent alum is making progress.

“Collaboration was tough over the summer because everyone had other obligations, but we ended up getting a lot done,” says Shaffer.

The music theory instructor and Pyle, a junior oboe performance major, are using a computer platform to encode and dissect Franz Schubert’s song set “Die schöne Müllerin.” Working with University of Oregon professor Stephen Rodgers and May ’15 music education graduate David Lonowski, they’re looking for patterns linking the phonetics of the poems to the rhythms, harmonies and key changes of the music.

What they uncovered this summer has been encouraging. “We found that there’s definitely something going on here,” says Shaffer. “But a couple of questions about the notes and rhythms need to be addressed.” The team was able to encode 20 songs, which amounted to around 100 of the most common words in the German language. Shaffer says the work done this summer will help ensure consistency in pronunciation as the work goes on.

As with any research project, some unexpected steps have come up already. “We realized we could build a German-to-IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) dictionary,” says Pyle. “That wasn’t in the method at first, but doing those translations was slowing us down. So it was a lot of work but should help speed things up.”

Also unexpected was the addition of a new member of the team. Thanks to Shaffer’s dedicated blog and social media activity around the project, a music theory and cognitive science expert in Michigan got wind of their work. “Leigh VanHandel from Michigan State contacted me and said she already had 1,200 songs encoded, mostly the music but in some cases the German lyrics as well,” Shaffer explains. “She had the music for all the songs we had transcribed, so we cleaned up our code based on that.”

With their interdisciplinary team assembled, and communicating throughout the project via the instant messaging platform Slack, the next step for Shaffer and crew will be to start addressing some of those emerging questions. “One that’s come up,” he says, “is whether pronunciation has changed since Schubert’s time. We’re coding for how people would sing these songs now, but the way these words were pronounced when the poems were written affected the decisions Schubert made when he wrote the music, and pronunciation might be completely different today.” Once final details are ironed out in the code, Shaffer says they can really start digging into the data.

That’s the step Pyle is looking forward to most. “When I started this, I was in over my head,” she says. “Now that I’ve learned a bit of German and IPA and some of the coding, the process is becoming more exciting. “One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is how to self-publish your work. I had never thought about using blogging to promote what you’re doing. That interconnectivity was really cool to learn,” Pyle explains. Shaffer hopes the social aspect of the project will come in handy down the road. “It’s about making sure the right people hear about what you’re doing,” he says. “I wouldn’t have known that Leigh had all these songs encoded if she hadn’t seen our blog. Community engagement has been really helpful so far. As we start to need linguists or programmers, we’ll be able to tap into this network.”

Ultimately, they want their research to lead to a more well rounded understanding of song. “Modern studies focus less on the poetry of songs now,” says Shaffer. “I’m hoping that we can bring the sound of the poetry to the forefront again, just like we do with the music.” Follow along with the group’s research on the Leider Project website.

The search for the “why” in a handful of Schubert Lieder is picking up steam for Jordan Pyle and Kris Shaffer.

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Music theory: from Schubert to Cracker Jacks

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 19:03:59 +0000

Music theory: from Schubert to Cracker Jacks Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/15/2015 - 13:03

Jessie Bauters

Music theory professors Yonatan Malin and Keith Waters

When we listen to music, there are certain pieces that we just enjoy. Whether it’s through repetition, the accessibility of the melody or even a fond memory associated with the tune, we “get” it—or, in the best cases, we feel as if the composer “gets” us.

But then there are those other pieces that, for whatever reason, don’t click. The melodies that don’t speak to us—or are sometimes seemingly non-existent. That’s where understanding what’s happening in the music can help us appreciate—even begin to enjoy—music that we otherwise wouldn’t listen to twice.

That’s the revelation our music theory faculty hope the public will experience during the CU on the Weekend event, “Gershwin Meets Schubert: Words, Music and Song.” Hosted by the Office of Outreach and Engagement, CU on the Weekend invites members of the community to campus for free lectures on some of the research happening at CU-Boulder.

Theory faculty Yonatan Malin and Keith Waters saw the series as an opportunity to bring Boulder in on the fascinating work they and their colleagues are doing. “We wanted to be able to show the public what we do, like the other areas of music,” says Malin. “People are curious about music theory, and this is a way to share our work with them.”

The program, which will combine lecture and performances of George and Ira Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm,” two Franz Schubert songs and the baseball game mainstay “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” is also a chance to showcase College of Music graduate student performers. The goal is to show people that art songs like Schubert’s are just as enjoyable as the more popular Gershwin. “We’re not necessarily proposing a connection between the two, just the fact that art song is often more accessible than we might think. Conversely, popular song is a lot more sophisticated. It has a lot of interesting things going on,” Malin explains.

Malin hopes the introduction to theory concepts will make them less intimidating. “It’s easier to understand rhythm in song because it’s less abstract. It has lyrics. So we’ll talk about the rhythm of the lyrics.”

The theory department plans to host an event every year during CU on the Weekend. Just like with a piece of music, the hope is that repetition will lead to better understanding of theory. “You can hear everything we talk about if we can draw your attention to it,” says Malin. “A friend of mine asked me once, ‘What theory do you teach?’ The ‘theory’ is that we can describe what we hear ... and in the act of describing it, we learn to hear it better.”

“Gershwin Meets Schubert: Words, Music and Song” is Saturday, Oct. 24, 10:30 a.m. in the Chamber Hall (C-199). The public is invited to this free event, but seating is limited so arrive early. College of Music Dean Robert Shay will introduce Malin and Waters.

Theory faculty Yonatan Malin and Keith Waters will lead a discussion Saturday, Oct. 24, during CU on the Weekend, titled "Gershwin Meets Schubert: Words, Music and Song."

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Preview: Faculty Tuesday with Throw Down or Shut Up!

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 19:13:52 +0000

Preview: Faculty Tuesday with Throw Down or Shut Up! Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/09/2015 - 13:13

Jessie Bauters

On Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2015, quartet Throw Down or Shut Up! - pianist Daphne Leong, saxophonist and flutist John Gunther, percussionist Michael Tetreault and guitarist Patrick Sutton - will present "Patterns at Play" for the Faculty Tuesday series.

[video:www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEx4DcBDdlE]

On Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2015, quartet Throw Down or Shut Up! will present "Patterns at Play" for the Faculty Tuesday series.

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Flip the classroom, flip the conference

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 22:48:16 +0000

Flip the classroom, flip the conference Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/13/2015 - 16:48

Jessie Bauters

"Engaging Students: An Unconference on Music Pedagogy" comes online and in-person to the College of Music July 23-28. Photo provided.

For most students, an 8 a.m. class isn’t always the best time to listen to and absorb a lecture. The ideal situation to comprehend something may come later in the day, perhaps even when the student is alone in his or her dorm room.

“I try to reserve as much classroom time as possible for active learning — taking advantage of the fact that we’re all in that room together,” says music theory instructor Kris Shaffer.

That’s the whole idea behind the flipped pedagogy concept. Information is exchanged and memorization happens outside the classroom, while collaboration and discussion happen within.

Likewise, the best way for educators to internalize and grasp a concept isn’t necessarily in a conference room with dozens of peers, listening to a speaker deliver a prepared presentation complete with PowerPoint and notecards.

And that’s the whole idea behind the upcoming “unconference,” which is being held both online and in person at the College of Music later this month.

“Engaging Students: An Unconference on Music Pedagogy” gives music theory teachers new ways to bring active learning to their classrooms. But instead of observing and taking notes on a panel, teachers are participating in active learning themselves.

“They’re involved in every stage of the process. At the beginning, we brainstorm what topics we’re going to cover throughout the course of the unconference,” Shaffer explains. “Then we talk about those topics, ask each other questions, and share experiences and scenarios.”

In its third year, the “unconference” (previously called “Flip Camp Music Theory”), will go online for the first time. “Before, we found that a big audience was watching on livestream. So we took it all online this year too, in order to make it easier for more people to attend,” says Shaffer.

The online format will also allow a more in-depth look at the various proposed topics, including problem-based learning, teaching online and assessment. “I anticipate people will take more time on one topic, break away and then compile their own information to post on the website in blog form.” Shaffer says that should lend itself to the sharing of resources for teaching methods like flipped pedagogy, which aren’t as widely available yet as study plans for more traditional methods.

The “unconference” is open to music theorists and other educators interested in classroom pedagogy. The online session is July 23-24, while the in-person session at the College of Music is July 27-28. For more information, visit the “unconference” website, or follow @FlipCampMT on Twitter.

“Engaging Students: An Unconference on Music Pedagogy” is coming up online and in person at the College of Music July 23-28.

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The harmony of phonetics

Anonymous — Tue, 26 May 2015 19:41:55 +0000

The harmony of phonetics Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/26/2015 - 13:41

Jessie Bauters

Kris Shaffer, David Lonowski and Jordan Pyle talk via Skype to Stephen Rodgers as they begin their summer-long analysis of the words and melodies of Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin.

When most of us hear a song for the first time, we aren’t necessarily listening to chord progressions, identifying the counter-melody or finding a correlation between key changes and the sound of the words used.

But with a few keystrokes, hundreds of lines of code and help from the phonetics library, CU-Boulder music theory instructor Kris Shaffer, a colleague in Oregon and two students will use computers to do just that.

It’s a melding of the romantic era and the digital era—music theory research at its best. “We’ll start with a 20-song set by Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin,” Shaffer explains. “From there, we’ll compare the phonetic data—changes in the kinds of sounds the poet is using—to the key changes and the chord changes and see if there’s a pattern.”

In other words, the research will show whether Schubert made his musical choices based on the words by poet Wilhelm Müller, who wrote Die schöne Müllerin.

So, where does the computer fit in?

Digital Humanities

For Shaffer, a traditional music theorist, the idea of the digital humanities didn’t become an interest until grad school. “It’s been popular for a while among literary scholars. But in music, there’s still only a small set of people using computational analysis,” he explains.

Shaffer embarks on this corpus-based study, dubbed The Lieder Project, with the help of another researcher he met several years ago, University of Oregon music theorist Stephen Rodgers.

“Stephen is a theorist and a singer, so he thinks about how his mouth and his vocal chords are moving as he’s singing, but he also thinks about the musical structure and how it’s changing at the same time,” Shaffer says.

A shared interest and a hunch that there might be a reason for the musical changes in Die schöne Müllerin led the two together. “Schubert is very artful in how he engages with the text, so we expect to see patterns,” says Shaffer. “We decided to collaborate, encode the songs based on harmonic and melodic structure and look at the phonetics of the poems line by line.”

The two students involved in the summer-long project—oboist Jordan Pyle and music education major David Lonowski—landed the gig in part thanks to an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) grant.

For Pyle, the project represents an exciting and fascinating crossroads of music, phonetics and poetry. “This interdisciplinary, multilayered work is what I look for—both academically and professionally,” she explains. “I strongly believe that the most rewarding and interesting discoveries happen at the intersections of disciplines.”

She says this is also a chance to improve as a musician. “It allows me to engage with the works in different ways that serve to enrich and nuance my performance interpretations.”

Agile Research

The process for inputting and analyzing the songs sounds more like software engineering than musical research. Shaffer says it starts with the poems the songs are based on.

“We encode each word using the International Phonetic Alphabet. Then we categorize the phonetics, and I build a program that creates tables from that data that we then analyze,” says Shaffer.

The table will show the probability of certain notes or chord progressions coinciding with certain phonetic sounds. “Then we can start to look for patterns and determine whether our hunch is just a coincidence,” Shaffer explains.

And it just may be. “We’re conditioned to pay attention to certain things when we listen to music. We might be so familiar with these songs that we think we’re hearing things. But computers aren’t,” Shaffer adds. “So the computer can either confirm our suspicion or prompt us to change course. If we see a pattern emerge in this first set, Jordan may turn this into a more in-depth research project.”

Even if the end result of the research is that this is all just a coincidence, Shaffer says there are still questions to be answered. “Then we can start to ask why. Why was the song written this way this time? What was the composer trying to convey?”

Pyle hopes this process is only the beginning of her involvement. “My main goals are to learn to conduct my own research using these methods and turn the project into an honors thesis,” she says. “I also want to present at the annual Special Undergraduate Enrichment Programs (SUEP) research conference, perhaps attend other conferences and work with Kris to get some works published on this topic.”

A New Understanding of Music

The project is just kicking off. To begin, Lonowski and Rodgers, who have a deep understanding of the phonetic alphabet, will encode the poems; Pyle will encode the music; and Shaffer will build the computer program. But because the insights come from the interaction of these different areas, the four will converse regularly and trade roles for different parts of the project.

Depending on how things go, the process of analyzing just the first 20 songs could take all summer. But even so, Shaffer stresses, there are still people who undertake these kinds of projects by hand.

“It’s manageable with a handful of songs. But if we were to do with pencil and paper what the computer is doing, it would take months,” he says.

Just as in music creation and recording, Shaffer says technology could be a game changer in the study of music theory. “The digital humanities offer a great opportunity to combine what computers do best—crunch numbers and perform basic tasks reliably and quickly—with what humanists do best—think creatively, critically, even skeptically, about what we perceive.

“When we combine those two perspectives, we can learn even more about art, language and culture than if we follow either one of them on its own.”

The team will be blogging and tweeting about the process throughout the summer. Follow along at The Lieder Project blog and by following Kris Shaffer’s twitter handle, @krisshaffer.

This summer, music theory instructor Kris Shaffer, a colleague in Oregon and two CU-Boulder music students will be happily buried beneath a pile of code, phonetics, melodies and counter-melodies.

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