CCM’s Thinking About Music Lecture Series Resumes On Friday, Jan. 27

Each semester, CCM welcomes distinguished experts for a series of free Friday afternoon musical discussions. This spring, the Thinking About Music lecture series will present four free public talks, beginning with a presentation on Arnold Schoenberg and the 1913 Scandal Concert by Vanderbilt University Professor of Musicology Joy H. Calico on Friday, Jan. 27.

Schoenberg caricature originally published in ‘Die Zeit’ on April 6, 1913.

Sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, these music theory and history discussions feature diverse topics presented by distinguished experts from all over the United States and are designed to engage participants’ imaginations and to consider music in new ways.

This semester’s guest lecturers also include University of Kentucky Professor Donna Kwon (Feb. 10), Case Western Reserve University Professor Francesca Brittan (March 3) and Bowling Green State University Professor Per Broman (April 7). See the listings below for more information on this semester’s presentation topics.

Since its inception in 1997, the Thinking About Music Series has presented over 130 lectures and one symposium by guests from a number of different colleges, universities, schools of music, foundations, institutes, museums and publications.

The subjects of the lectures have covered historical musicology, music theory and ethnomusicology, along with the ancillary fields of organology, dance, music business and law, cognitive psychology, and the philosophy, theology and sociology of music.
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2017 SPRING JOSEPH AND FRANCES JONES POETKER THINKING ABOUT MUSIC LECTURE SERIES

2:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG AND THE 1913 SCANDAL CONCERT
Joy H. Calico, Vanderbilt University
On March 31 of 1913, Arnold Schoenberg conducted a concert in the Great Hall of Vienna’s Musikverein, which became known as the city’s most notorious scandal concert. The event was broken up by a melee, charges were filed and the subsequent court proceedings were reported in the press. This lecture analyzes the ways in which both the scandal and Schoenberg’s response to it sit at the nexus of fin-de-siècle anxieties about Central European concert life, the anti-noise movement and emerging copyright law.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10
STEPPING IN THE MADANG: SITE-SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE IN KOREAN DRUMMING AND DANCE
Donna Kwon, University of Kentucky
In Korean folk expressive culture, the outdoor village courtyard or madang is often conceived in opposition to the concert stage or mudae. In this presentation, Donna Kwon will discuss how the madang became central to the promotion of site-specific Korean drumming and dance. She will first discuss how this contributes to the expressive ecology of a place-based tradition in shamanist ritual forms of Korean drumming or p’ungmul. Then she will explore how the madang and site-specific performance concepts are applied by contemporary ch’angjak yeonhui groups. These groups consist of performers who are trained in Korean drumming and other traditional performing arts but who combine them into new works.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, March 3
ELECTRIC BATON: SOUND, SCIENCE AND THE BIRTH OF THE PODIUM CONDUCTOR
Francesca Brittan, Case Western Reserve University
Hector Berlioz, among the first of the modern conductors, was a larger-than-life figure, at once magisterial, quasi-magical and military. Among the formative moments of his conducting career was a concert given at the height of the Exposition universelle (Paris, 1855), which established him as a musical leader of formidable power. Here he relied on a new wedding of music and technology — an “electric baton” — to wield the massive forces under his command. This talk examines the nature of his device and, more broadly, the ways in which telegraphy and electricity (both artificial and nervous) emerged as central to romantic notions of conducting.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, Apr. 7
BERGMAN’S MUSIC(IANS): MIRROR AND MEANING
Per Broman, Bowling Green State University
Ingmar Bergman’s love of classical music, especially that of J.S. Bach, is well known and is exhibited frequently in his films. Many films also feature musicians. In this presentation, Broman will analyze the role of these characters — who they are, what they do, how they behave and what they talk about — and argue that they are essential for understanding Bergman’s aesthetics.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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Event Information
Unless otherwise indicated, all Thinking About Music lectures take place on Fridays at 2:30 p.m. in the Baur Room of CCM’s Corbett Center for the Performing Arts, which is located on the campus of the University of Cincinnati.

These events are free and open to the public. All event dates and programs are subject to change. Visit ccm.uc.edu for the most current event information.

Parking and Directions
Parking is available in the CCM Garage (located at the base of Corry Boulevard off Jefferson Avenue) and additional garages throughout the UC campus. Please visit uc.edu/parking for more information on parking rates.

For detailed maps and directions, please visit uc.edu/visitors. Additional parking is available off-campus at the U Square complex on Calhoun Street and other neighboring lots.

For directions to CCM Village, visit ccm.uc.edu/about/directions.
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CCM Season Presenting Sponsor and Musical Theatre Program Sponsor: The Otto M. Budig Family Foundation

CCM’s Thinking About Music Series is sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, Ritter & Randolph, LLC, Corporate Counsel; along with support from Interim Dean mcclung’s Office, the Graduate Student Association and the Division of Composition, Musicology and Theory at CCM.

 

 

CCM’s Thinking About Music Lecture Series Opens Friday, Sept. 9

Each semester, CCM welcomes distinguished experts for a series of free Friday afternoon musical discussions. This fall, the Thinking About Music lecture series will present four free public talks, beginning with a presentation by Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Professor Halina Goldberg on Friday, Sept. 9, held as part of CCM’s Fall Polish Festival.

Sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, these music theory and history discussions feature diverse topics presented by distinguished experts from all over the United States and are designed to engage participants’ imaginations and to consider music in new ways.

This semester’s guest lecturers also include University of Alabama Professor Stephen Peles (Sept. 16), Yale University Professor Brian Kane (Sept. 30) and Miami University Professor Tammy Kernodle (Oct. 28). See the listings below for more information on this semester’s presentation topics.

Since its inception in 1997, the Thinking About Music Series has presented nearly 130 lectures and one symposium by guests from a number of different colleges, universities, schools of music, foundations, institutes, museums and publications.

The subjects of the lectures have covered historical musicology, music theory and ethnomusicology, along with the ancillary fields of organology, dance, music business and law, cognitive psychology, and the philosophy, theology and sociology of music.

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2016 FALL JOSEPH AND FRANCES JONES POETKER THINKING ABOUT MUSIC LECTURE SERIES

2:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9
THE NATIONAL COMPOSER / THE COSMOPOLITAN COMPOSER: IN SEARCH OF POLISH (?) MUSIC
Halina Goldberg, Jacobs School of Music
Dr. Halina Goldberg, acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost experts on Polish music, will present a lecture on aspects of Polish art and culture.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE

Polish Festival Sponsor: Judith Heiny and Piotr Chomczynski
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2:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16
HOW THE GIVEN IS TAKEN: BABBITT, PRINCETON AND THE PSYCHOLOGIZATION OF POSTWAR AMERICAN MUSIC ANALYSIS
Stephen Peles, University of Alabama
The public controversy engendered by Babbitt’s call for a “scientific” music theory has tended to overshadow other more enduring aspects of his meta-theoretical program. This lecture argues for the significance to Babbitt’s legacy of his insistence on the centrality of the listener (real and imagined) to analytic claims.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30
HEARING DOUBLE: JAZZ ONTOLOGY
Brian Kane, Yale University
Philosophers have often considered the ontology of music, worrying over the relation between works, scores and performances — yet jazz has not received the same consideration. This lecture argues for a non-essentialist, network-based ontology of jazz standards.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 28
I TOO SING AMERICA: BLACK WOMEN MUSICIANS, LANGSTON HUGHES AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF BLACK RADICAL EXPRESSIVE CULTURE IN COLD WAR ERA AMERICA
Tammy Kernodle, Miami University
This talk will explore how poet/activist Langston Hughes’ collaborations with Margaret Bonds, Odetta and Nina Simone provided the foundation for the type of radical expressive culture that advanced, musically, the ideals of political and social equality during the 1950s and 1960s.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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Event Information
Unless otherwise indicated, all Thinking About Music lectures take place on Fridays at 2:30 p.m. in the Baur Room of CCM’s Corbett Center for the Performing Arts, which is located on the campus of the University of Cincinnati.

These events are free and open to the public. All event dates and programs are subject to change. Visit ccm.uc.edu for the most current event information.

Parking and Directions
Parking is available in the CCM Garage (located at the base of Corry Boulevard off Jefferson Avenue) and additional garages throughout the UC campus. Please visit uc.edu/parking for more information on parking rates.

For detailed maps and directions, please visit uc.edu/visitors. Additional parking is available off-campus at the U Square complex on Calhoun Street and other neighboring lots.

For directions to CCM Village, visit ccm.uc.edu/about/directions.

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A preeminent institution for the performing and media arts, CCM is the largest single source of performing arts presentations in the state of Ohio.

All event dates and programs are subject to change. For a complete calendar of events, please visit us online at ccm.uc.edu.

CCM’s ‘Thinking About Music’ Lecture Series Resumes on Jan. 29, 2016

Each semester, CCM welcomes distinguished experts for a series of free Friday afternoon musical discussions. This spring, the Thinking About Music lecture series will present five free public talks, beginning with a presentation by Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Professor Blair Johnston on Friday, Jan. 29.

CCM’s Spring 2016 ‘Thinking About Music’ Schedule.

Sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, these music theory and history discussions feature diverse topics presented by distinguished experts from all over the United States and are designed to engage participants’ imaginations and to consider music in new ways.

This semester’s guest lecturers also include University of California at Los Angeles Professor Daniel Neuman (Feb. 26), Yale University Professor Brian Kane (March 11), Cornell University Professor Annette Richards (April 1) and Tufts University Professor Emerita Janet Schmalfeldt (April 15). See the listings below for more information on this semester’s presentation topics.

Since its inception in 1997, the Thinking About Music Series has presented nearly 130 lectures and one symposium by guests from a number of different colleges, universities, schools of music, foundations, institutes, museums and publications.

The subjects of the lectures have covered historical musicology, music theory and ethnomusicology, along with the ancillary fields of organology, dance, music business and law, cognitive psychology, and the philosophy, theology and sociology of music.

Event Information
Unless otherwise indicated, all Thinking About Music lectures take place on Fridays at 2:30 p.m. in the Baur Room of CCM’s Corbett Center for the Performing Arts, which is located on the campus of the University of Cincinnati.

These events are free and open to the public. All event dates and programs are subject to change. Visit ccm.uc.edu for the most current event information.

Parking and Directions
Parking is available in the CCM Garage (located at the base of Corry Boulevard off Jefferson Avenue) and additional garages throughout the UC campus. Please visit uc.edu/parking for more information on parking rates.

For detailed maps and directions, please visit uc.edu/visitors. Additional parking is available off-campus at the new U Square complex on Calhoun Street and other neighboring lots.

For directions to CCM Village, visit ccm.uc.edu/about/directions.

____________________

2016 SPRING JOSEPH AND FRANCES JONES POETKER THINKING ABOUT MUSIC LECTURE SERIES

2:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29
ORCHESTRATIONAL SCENARIOS IN THE MUSIC OF SIBELIUS
Blair Johnston, Indiana University
Orchestration—and, with it, the roles that timbre plays in musical rhetoric, expressive trajectories, and the choices made by performers—deserves more attention from scholars than it has received. In an ongoing project, Blair Johnston is examining the rich ways that orchestrational choices in post-Romantic symphonic works interact with the “structures” described by more conventional music analysis, an area that features music-theoretic vocabularies that do not always allow for easy discussion of certain dimensions of sound—in broad terms, its shapes, its colors, its densities—that are especially essential in music from this era. This talk will explore this through the use of late symphonic works by Sibelius (excerpts from the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Symphonies and Tapiola), music in which complex approaches to musical form and material are fused to a highly individual orchestrational language—indeed, music in which there may be almost no line between form, material and timbre.
Location: Baur Room
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2:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26
MUSIC INHERITANCE AND HEREDITARY MUSICIANS: INDIA TODAY, THE WEST IN THE PAST
Daniel Neuman, University of California at Los Angeles
In this talk, Daniel Neuman considers the role of hereditary musicians in India in the recent past as well as today, as they become increasingly rare in the Hindustani classical music world. Some comparative gestures to Western classical music (and in particular J.S. Bach) highlight the important roles that genealogy, pedigree and biography play as different kinds of authentication markers and historical sources in each classical music practice.
Location: Baur Room
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Brian Kane’s March 11 lecture has been canceled. Stay tuned for information on his rescheduled presentation.
2:30 p.m. Friday, March 11
HEARING DOUBLE: JAZZ AND ONTOLOGY
Brian Kane, Yale University
Philosophers have often considered the ontology of music, worrying over the relation between works, scores and performances. Yet, surprisingly, jazz has not received the same consideration, even though jazz—where performances of works such as “standards” vary widely in their properties—represents an even more challenging ontological problem than found in classical music. In this talk, Brian Kane will argue for a non-essentialist, network-based ontology of jazz standards. This argument will depend on two basic operations—chains of replication and chains of nomination—that together provide a robust basis for judgments concerning a performance’s identity and individuation. Also, just as jazz is an exemplification of a network-based ontology of music, Kane will try to draw out some wider implications for the ontology of music more generally.
Location: Baur Room
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2:30 p.m. Friday, April 1
SENSIBILITY TRIUMPHANT: C. P. E. BACH AND THE ART OF FEELING
Annette Richards, Cornell University
In Goethe’s Triumph der Empfindsamkeit (1777), sensibility, feeling and sympathy are brutally exposed as trivial obsessions with postures and props. Excess, bad taste and poor behavior are the focus of Goethe’s hilarious critique of the craze unleashed by his own Sorrows of Young Werther. Embodied in this strange and funny text is satire aimed not only at the cult of Empfindsamkeit and at the works of the artist himself, but also at the conspicuous blurring of public and private spheres, the untoward exposure of personal proclivities and private feeling. Given the ubiquitous textbook designation of C. P. E. Bach as the architect of the ‘Empfindsamer Stil’ in music, Dr. Annette Richards takes another look at what ‘Empfindsamkeit’ might mean, especially for the composer’s late keyboard works. By examining this music (along with then-contemporary views on humor, satire and other cultural elements), the audience may have to reconsider Bach’s own claims about the competing aesthetics of public and private music.
Location: Baur Room
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2:30 p.m. Friday, April 15
DOMENICO SCARLATTI, ESCAPE ARTIST: SIGHTINGS OF HIS “MIXED STYLE” TOWARDS THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Janet Schmalfeldt, Tufts University Professor Emerita/Boston University Visiting Professor
Location: Baur Room

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CCM Season Presenting Sponsor and Musical Theatre Program Sponsor: The Otto M. Budig Family Foundation

Community Partner: ArtsWave

CCM’s Thinking About Music Series is sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, Ritter & Randolph, LLC, Corporate Counsel; along with support from Dean Landgren’s Office, the Graduate Student Association, and the Division of Composition, Musicology and Theory at CCM.

CCM’s ‘Thinking About Music’ Lecture Series Resumes on Feb. 6

Each semester, CCM welcomes distinguished experts for a series of free Friday afternoon musical discussions. This spring, the Thinking About Music lecture series will present five free public talks, beginning with a presentation by Tufts University Professor Joseph Auner on Friday, Feb. 6.

Sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, these music theory and history discussions feature diverse topics presented by distinguished experts from all over the United States and are designed to engage participants’ imaginations and to consider music in new ways.

This semester’s guest lecturers also include University of Minnesota Professor Michael Cherlin (Feb. 20), Cornell University Professor Annette Richards (March 6), National Jazz Museum Artistic Director Loren Schoenberg (March 13) and Eastman School of Music Professor Ellen Koskoff (April 17). See the listings below for more information on this semester’s presentation topics.

Since its inception in 1997, the Thinking About Music Series has presented over 120 lectures and one symposium by guests from a number of different colleges, universities, schools of music, foundations, institutes, museums and publications.

The subjects of the lectures have covered historical musicology, music theory and ethnomusicology, along with the ancillary fields of organology, dance, music business and law, cognitive psychology, and the philosophy, theology and sociology of music.

Event Information
Unless otherwise indicated, all Thinking About Music lectures take place on Fridays at 2:30 p.m. in the Baur Room of CCM’s Corbett Center for the Performing Arts, which is located on the campus of the University of Cincinnati.

These events are free and open to the public. All event dates and programs are subject to change. Visit ccm.uc.edu for the most current event information.

Parking and Directions
Parking is available in the CCM Garage (located at the base of Corry Boulevard off Jefferson Avenue) and additional garages throughout the UC campus. Please visit uc.edu/parking for more information on parking rates.

For detailed maps and directions, please visit uc.edu/visitors. Additional parking is available off-campus at the new U Square complex on Calhoun Street and other neighboring lots.

For directions to CCM Village, visit ccm.uc.edu/about/directions.
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2015 SPRING JOSEPH AND FRANCES JONES POETKER THINKING ABOUT MUSIC LECTURE SERIES

Guest speaker Joseph Auner.

2:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6
THE STOPPED CLOCK: SOME MOMENTS IN TONALITY AND TECHNOLOGY SINCE 1950
Joseph Auner, Tufts University
This talk will focus on the second half of the 20th century and two technologies that have contributed to different ways of working with tonality and tonal materials: namely, voltage controlled modular synthesizers and the tape loop. With reference to a wide range of music, Professor Joseph Auner will argue that the synthesizer and the tape loop, and related technologies like a tape-delay system, facilitated and required a kind of close listening to and manipulation of sound that could open up new perspectives on any acoustic phenomenon, including triads and tonal materials.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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Guest speaker Michael Cherlin.

2:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 20
LUIGI NONO’S FRAGMENTE-STILLE, AN DIOTIMA AND THE INEFFABLE
Michael Cherlin, University of Minnesota
The Romantic fragment, in poetry and music, points toward something that is ineffable – the sounds listeners hear point toward those that cannot be realized.  Whether it is beyond or still within Romanticism, it is this aesthetic that Michael Cherlin associates with Schoenberg and Webern, most particularly. Nono’s string quartet, a meditation on Diotima, continues that tradition. The lecture will explore the implications of this composition for a poetics of musical interpretation (whose falsifying “scientific” name is analysis).
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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Guest speaker Annette Richards.

2:30 p.m. Friday, March 6
This talk has been postponed due to weather-related flight delays.
SENSIBILITY TRIUMPHANT: C. P. E. BACH AND THE ART OF FEELING
Dr. Annette Richards, Cornell University
In Goethe’s Triumph der Empfindsamkeit (1777), sensibility, feeling and sympathy are brutally exposed as trivial obsessions with postures and props. Excess, bad taste and poor behaviour are the focus of Goethe’s hilarious critique of the craze unleashed by his own Sorrows of Young Werther. Embodied in this strange and funny text is satire aimed not only at the cult of Empfindsamkeit and at the works of the artist himself, but also at the conspicuous blurring of public and private spheres, the untoward exposure of personal proclivities and private feeling. Given the ubiquitous text-book designation of C. P. E. Bach as the architect of the ‘Empfindsamer Stil’ in music, Dr. Annette Richards takes another look at what ‘Empfindsamkeit’ might mean, especially for Bach’s late keyboard works. Revisiting the broader cultural contexts within which Bach lived and worked, she will map out the contemporary landscape of feeling constructed by critical and literary texts, as well as musical and visual artworks (including portraits in Bach’s collection). She hopes to suggest that some of Bach’s late music, especially the rondos and fantasias, complicate humour with satire and pathos with parody, in a way that presents a complex and disconcerting picture of what it might mean to sympathise, and to feel, musically. In the process, Bach’s own claims about the competing aesthetics of public and private music will be reconsidered.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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Guest speaker Loren Schoenberg.

2:30 p.m. Friday, March 13
LESTER YOUNG: NEW DISCOVERIES
Loren Schoenberg, Artistic Director, The National Jazz Museum in Harlem
As an American jazz tenor saxophonist and a member of Count Basie’s orchestra, Lester Young was one of the young genre’s most influential forces. In the last few years, a significant amount of previously unheard recordings have shed new light on his innovations. As Loren Schoenberg will attest, every surviving sound recorded by Young is vital, since there are no documents that capture the qualities that his peers remember most vividly.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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Guest speaker Ellen Koskoff.

2:30 p.m. Friday, April 17
IS ETHNOMUSICOLOGY INHERENTLY FEMINIST?
Dr. Ellen Koskoff, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
Dr. Ellen Koskoff will present excerpts from her recent book, A Feminist Ethnomusicology. In the process, she will raise several important questions. What, if anything, is feminist about ethnomusicology? What do fieldwork, ethnography and music contribute to the process of dismantling hierarchies of power based on gender? Furthermore, what does feminism contribute to a deeper understanding of social and musical difference? These questions will set the stage for a lively discussion.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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CCM Season Presenting Sponsor and Musical Theatre Program Sponsor: The Otto M. Budig Family Foundation

Community Partner: ArtsWave

CCM’s Thinking About Music Series is sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, Ritter & Randolph, LLC, Corporate Counsel; along with support from Dean Landgren’s Office, the Graduate Student Association, and the Division of Composition, Musicology and Theory at CCM.

CCM’s ‘Thinking About Music’ Public Lecture Series Resumes Feb. 17

Guest Lecturer Steven Rings. Photo: Valerie Booth O.

CCM’s “Thinking About Music” Lecture Series will present Steven Rings, University of Chicago, who will speak at 2 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 17 on the topic: “On Tonal Hearing: Quale and Chroma Revisited.” The lecture will be held in CCM’s Baur Room and is free and open to the general public.

CCM Students Talk Theory in Indianapolis

CCM faculty and students recently traveled to Indianapolis for a joint meeting of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory. Jessica McCafferty provides details in the latest issue of The News Record. You can view the full story here.

Music Theory Professor Steven Cahn Discusses “The Project”

UC’s Center for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning recently spotlighted Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of Music Theory Steven Cahn’s collaborative research with Peter Basser and Sinisa Pajevic on music and signal processing. “The Project,” as the work has been dubbed, marries aural and visual percepts into color-coded images and movies that track the generating musical performance.

Intrigued? You can view the entire faculty spotlight here.