Contemplative History, Background, Links
Since some time in 1981 or 1982, I have done some form of Zen meditation. My practice has ebbed and flowed, and has grown in importance over the years. From about 2010, I've managed a half-hour every day, and the benefit to my life cannot be overstated. My compositional approach amounts almost to a meditation practice, I now realize. The growth of my ideas about music is deeply indebted to the insights which emerge from meditation. And my teaching has been strongly influenced by my practice as well.
As I began to realize that the Sound-Energy Aggregate is a contemplative approach to musical analysis, I became involved in the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education. That organization's Summer Institute on Contemplative Learning in Higher Education helped me develop one of my signature courses, Contemplating Music, which uses the SEA method to analyze modern music directly from the sound, holding off on accessing scores for quite a while. And it was immediately apparent that a very worthwhile use of contemplative methods in teaching would be a brief contemplative practice at the beginning of every Graduate Theory Review of Aural Skills class in order to provide a practice that could help students set aside the hypercritical mind that often prevents them from performing anywhere near their potential.
Greater Boston Center For Contemplative Mind in Music
Given the implementation of such practices in classes, and on discovering colleagues who used contemplative practices in other ways, I founded the group, Contemplating Music: the Greater Boston Center for Contemplative Mind in Music (GBCCMM). The aim of the group is to foster the use of contemplative practices in the myriad of ways that people do so. The group met at my house in the first couple of years, and has struggled to find a site outside my home. My plan is to find a place in the next year (there is a site in sight!) and host a national conference to bring together practitioners of music and contemplation. It seems incredibly important to me to expand the use of this alternate way of knowing both inside and outside academia, particularly in so fitting a field as music.
GBCCMM will host a conference, "Music and Spirit", in spring 2020 at Follen Community Church! More details to come…
Blog
About the same time, I started a blog, Contemplating Music, to share insights that come from the contemplative side of musical engagement. I write about pieces I'm working on, musical experiences, or about specific thoughts or insights that arise from meditation. One day I hope I'll add posts with regularity, but so far the contributions have been in bursts.
Just Listening
With a slow-burning desire to spread the word about the Sound-Energy Aggregate theory, an understanding that it constitutes a contemplative practice when applied to listening, and a knowledge that not only do people invariably take quickly to the method and become deeply engaged in musical analysis as a result, people brighten up, they enjoy the work… I realized that what we do is to create an awakening of the spirit! I have therefore created a workshop that will bring this engagement, this experience of the joy of shared listening, to people outside academia, to those who are not musical practitioners, to those who think they don't know enough to appreciate or understand new music, to those who think they know everything important about music. In fact, what I have come to realize is that the Zen emphasis on not knowing is at the heart of liberating the mind, that by setting aside our fear of not knowing enough, or the debilitating arrogance of assuming to know everything, and just listen to what is there, we come alive to what is. The Zen practice I do now is called Shikantaza, or Just Sitting, so I call my workshop Just Listening.
Not so long ago, I was interviewed by Daren Bulmer for her podcast, Music, Mind, and Movement. The discussion ranged from my use of contemplative practices in composition through the development of the analytical procedure which led eventually to Just Listening. You may listen to that interview on Karen Bulmer's site.
Presentations
The conferences listed below are ones at which I have presented versions of the SEA theory in academic settings. For a listing of presentations of the Just Listening workshop, please follow this link and scroll down the page you arrive upon. (Update needed, these are from some time ago!)
Just Listening: Music and The Beginner’s Mind
Contemplative Practices for 21st Century Higher Education
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
March 9, 2018
Zen and the Art of Musical Analysis
Contemplative Practices for the 21st Century University
Virginia Tech University
March 11, 2016
interactive session using SEA analysis
Musical Phenomenology
Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education's 4th Annual Conference
Amherst College
September 22, 2012
poster session on SEA analysis
Residencies
I anticipate a number of residencies in the future, all gathered around iterations of Just Listening. The first to be scheduled is listed below. (There have been tours and residencies! Update coming soon!)
October 11-12, 2018
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Art Department and School of Music
Greensboro, NC