Friday, January 05, 2007

Conferences as Outreach

I get lots of announcements for academic music conferences, which I decided to start listing here. I think many of my readers are not music theorists or musicologists, but are interested in learning about music scholarship. I think performers should attend to get new ideas of programming or performance. Educators should attend to get new interesting facts with which to wow their students. Listeners should attend to learn about new ways to think about or listen to music and new genres of music.

First up is not a conference, but rather a debate. The topic is whether Toscanini was a force for good or ill. Joe Horowitz will be arguing with Mortimer Frank, with Henry Fogel as referee. The debate is January 8 at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in the Lincoln Center library in New York. It will be from 6-8 pm, including film and audio clips and sponsored by the New York Philharmonic. ($10 tickets)

The first real conference is the International Symposium on Latin American Choral Music: Contemporary Performance and the Colonial Legacy. It is held January 19-20 at the University of Arizona.
This symposium brings together scholars and musicians interested in the contemporary performance of Latin American music composed in the colonial
period, with special emphasis on choral music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The symposium will be convened as one of several inaugural events launching the new Institute for Music in the Americas at the University of Arizona School of Music and its research center for Colonial Latin American Music. We expect to publish the best of the proceedings from this symposium.
The symposium focuses primarily upon the following issues:

1.Publication of performance scores - including consideration of major resources, the processes of identifying, evaluating, accessing, and editing manuscripts; as well as the mechanics of contemporary publication and distribution.
2. Matters of performance practice - including consideration of interpretation, instrumentation, and vocal distribution, as well as decisions balancing authenticity with the demands of contemporary expectations, and values.
3.Recording - including matters of production, evaluation of existing releases, plans for new releases, and strategies appropriate in the age of digital distribution.
4.Engagement- including consideration of representation of Latin American
choral music (or related repertoire) in educational programs, curriculum development, and civic events.
5.Aesthetics and style studies - including discussions of genre, style, and reception in regional and international contexts.

Moving across the pond, a Study Day on Haydn's Creation will be held at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford. This is on February 20. Cost for nonmembers of the Society for Music Analysis or the University of Oxford is £10 for students, £20 for non-students.

The Forum on Music & Christian Scholarship will be held March 9 and 10 at the Yale University Institute of Sacred Music. There are many papers on a wide variety of musical genres. The keynote address is by Thomas H. Troeger, Lantz Professor of Christian Communication at Yale.

Next is a multidisplinary conference, the American Hungarian Educators' Association. They will be meeting at St. John's University (Manhattan Campus) in New York City on April 19-21. The musical feature is a celebration of the 125th anniversary of Zoltan Kodaly's birth (and 40th anniversary of his death, but that's a downer). For those interested in presenting something on Kodaly, the deadline for submission is January 20th.

Musical Meaning and Human Values: A Colloquium with Lawrence Kramer is a 2-day international conference held at Fordham University's Lincoln Center Campus on May 4 and 5. This one is free, so a great opportunity for interested bystanders.

Featured speakers include Walter Bernhart (University of Graz), Marshall Brown (University of Washington), Keith Chapin (Fordham University), Peter Franklin (Oxford University), Walter Frisch (Columbia University), Lawrence Kramer (Fordham University), Richard Leppert (University of Minnesota), and Susan McClary (UCLA).

Finally, the International Computer Music Conference, held in Copenhagen from August 27-31. The theme is "Immersed music." Submissions of papers, videos, compositions, etc are due by April 30th.

I will post more conference announcements as I receive them

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