Harvard University Department of M usic MUSICnewsletter Vol. 21, No. 1 Winter 2021 Community Building and Social Justice Through Music Harvard University “This is my favorite way to Department of Music teach—and learn,” says Professor 3 Oxford Street of the Practice Claire Chase of her Cambridge, MA 02138 Freshman Seminar, Community Building and Social Justice through 617-495-2791 Music. “In my own music education, music.fas.harvard.edu the transformative moments for me always took place when an elder invited me to do work alongside them—not just for them—and when INSIDE they invited me into their practice, assuming that I would rise to the 3 Faculty News occasion. I wanted to invite these 4 Ask the Experts: How Ford, freshmen into the process of making Rockefeller, and the NEA work alongside some of the greatest artists of our time. They have more Changed American Music than risen to the occasion.” 5 BLM: an open letter from the Chase commissioned the Hous- Department of Music ton composer, percussionist, and 6 Alumni News sound artist Susie Ibarra to create an interactive, virtual musical score with 8 Spring Events: Laurie Anderson, the fifteen students in her seminar. Miranda Cuckson, Parker “Susie has done a number of 9 Library News virtual soundwalk projects—in the 10 Graduate Student News Philippines, New York and Pitts- burgh, to name a few—but never 11 Undergraduate Student News with students on a college campus. She completely embraced the notion that many of these students would be composing music for the first time.” The result: Digital Sanctuar- ies Harvard, a soundwalk app that We have a new YouTube chan- invites the public to take a virtual nel. Live concerts and events are musical journey around the Har- streamed at https://www.you- vard University campus and beyond tube.com/channel/UCOTXRZa- through an ever-changing musical 17HQkRQW0egdB2kg score. “Students chose places of impor- tance to them and created original Department Chair compositions that combined field Ingrid T. Monson recordings, vocal and instrumental Director of Administration improvisations, electronic instruments, and original and historical texts,” according to Nancy Shafman Chase. They form, says description of the app for Digital Sanctuaries, “a dynamic sonic Newsletter Editor archive of the experiences of a freshman class searching for connection, community and Lesley Bannatyne [email protected] continued sanctuary in the midst of a pandemic.” “These students are pianists, violin- Harvard students are so good at expressing things with words; in this seminar they ists, singer-songwriters, musicians in rock learned to express with sound—you can often express more directly, more abstractly, bands, music producers, budding music maybe, or more deeply this way. educators, and organization-builders, all —Claire Chase from different musical backgrounds,” says Chase. “Over the first weeks of the term Digital Sanctuaries Harvard is available Collaborators on the Digital Sanctuaries they learned recording and audio editing for free in the Apple app store as of Dec. 19, Harvard app are computer scientist, Apple techniques, worked with experimental vo- 2020. The entire composition lasts one hour, Distinguished Educator, and TED fellow cal practitioners like Jen Shyu and Jasmine and you can walk through it in the sequence Rommel Feria and his team (Philippines), Wilson, with percussionists like Susie, and the students imagined, or listen to all or part interaction designer Shankari Murali (India), in a workshop with Levy Lorenzo they all of it in in your own order. and sound engineer is Jake landau, New York. built their own custom-made electronic instruments.” Outside the Zoom classroom, each Students Perform Work by Lisa E. Harris student took a weekly sound walk to find She masterfully their site and to listen. found a way to honor “The campus and the city sound dif- and amplify every ferent in the fall of 2020 than ever before," says Chase. “Think of the wildlife that has voice in the class moved in now that the campus has de- while also commu- densified! We all hear the world differently nicating a powerful this year. But what does the freshman class at Harvard hear that we do not? How do message: that we ur- they tell their stories through sound?” gently need to listen The seminar students were mostly to and believe what housed in Cambridge, but there were a Black women are few spread throughout the world. As a re- sult, Digital Sanctuaries Harvard includes telling us. compositions that incorporate volleyball Photo: Steven Varni courts in Taipei, the Bangkok international For the second half of Community her own words, music, and movement airport, a rocky beach in Seattle, as well Building and Social Justice Through Music, into a stunning 20-minute work of song, as the Charles River, Fresh Pond, Harvard Chase commissioned a new work by Lisa E. poetry, and dance. Square subway stop, and the steps of Harvard Harris, a Houston-based composer, inter- “Of course, all of this is a challenge to Law School. Each site on the app includes a disciplinary artist, and filmmaker. The piece do on Zoom, but Li has playfully embraced biography of the student, a selfie, and a pro- is called “A BLACK WOMAN TOLD ME Zoom latency as a 17th player in the piece, gram note about why and what this moment AND I BELIEVE HER. A MOVEMENT” and the ensemble strives not so much for in history has meant to them. (2020) and is scored for 16 voices (Harris synchronicity as we do for presence and “The pieces vary widely,” Chase plus the 15 students), body percussion, collectivity. She masterfully found a way explains. “They are by turns meditative, and mixed instrumental ensemble (two to honor and amplify every voice in the whimsical, expressive of racial tension, ukuleles, guitars, flute, violin, keyboards, class while also communicating a powerful grief, loss, hope; we’re not trying to tell a and drums). message: that we urgently need to listen to single story, but many stories.” “Harris is one of the most brilliant and believe what Black women are telling Chase would love to make her course artist-activist voices of our time,”says Claire us.” a recurring Freshman Seminar. “Imagine Chase, “so it seemed natural to ask her for The work was presented in its world ten years of freshman soundwalks! Music a new piece at this turbulent moment in premiere on December 3 at an online always responds to historical events, and history, and as our country reckons with public event that also featured IONE, the it’s vitally important to create space for racial injustice and the foundational white artist, author, director and spouse of the communication about our current mo- supremacy of our arts and education insti- late Pauline Oliveros, leading students and ment in expressive modes that go beyond tutions. Harris collected texts from each of the audience in Oliveros’ 1971 composi- language.” the students and wove them together with tion The Tuning Meditation. 2 Faculty News Morton B. Knafel Research Professor Thomas Oja Explores Marian F. Kelly published The Liber Ordinarius of the Anderson and the DAR Abbey of Saint Gertrude at Nivelles, a study and edition of a manuscript in the Houghton Carol J. Oja’s research focuses on Library. At the same time he contributed to the history of American music a volume of essays on the manuscript edited and culture. Her most recent by Jeffrey Hamburger. A conference on the book, Bernstein Meets Broadway: manuscript scheduled for July at Nivelles had Collaborative Art in a Time of to be postponed. War (Oxford University Press) Harvard College Fellow Landon Mor- received the Music in American rison virtually presented a paper at the 2020 Culture Award from the Ameri- meeting of the American Musicological Soci- can Musicological Society. Her ety (AMS) titled “Digital Labor and the Musi- Making Music Modern: New York Harvard Magazine illustration by Wesley Merritt. cal Exchange Value of Max for Live Devices.” in the 1920s (Oxford) won the He also presented at the virtual Music Theory IN THE SUMMER of 1977, NASA rock- Lowens Book Award from the So- Society of New York State (MTSNYS) titled eted two spacecraft out of Earth’s orbit. Their ciety for American Music. Sounding To- “Computer-Assisted Orchestration, Format mission: explore the unexplored. NASA had gether: Collaborative Perspectives on U.S. Theory, and the Social Construction of Tim- already been to the moon; with Voyager 1 and Music in the 21st Century, co-edited with bre.” Morrison published “Reassembling Kaija Voyager 2, its Jet Propulsion Laboratory wanted Charles Hiroshi Garrett , is forthcoming Saariaho’s Vers le blanc (1982)” in Mitteilungen to push beyond the outer planets and the Sun’s from the University of Michigan Press, der Paul Sacher Stiftung 33 (2020) and co- gravitational pull, and into interstellar space. By and she is at work on a book provision- authored with Sadie Couture a book review 2030, drained of electricity, both ships will lose ally titled “Civil Rights in the Concert “Sensate Sovereignty: A Dialogue on Dylan contact with Earth. But that may not be the last Hall: Marian Anderson and the Racial Robinson’s Hungry Listening” in Amodern: time they’re heard. Affixed to each Voyager is a Desegregation of Classical Music.” Currents (2020). Finally, Morrison was the golden record. The Golden Record. For Profes- recipient of McGill University’s 2019–20 K. sor Alex Rehding—who has written books on For the US to move past the current B. Jenckes Convocation Prize. intellectual history, sound studies, and media racial crisis and achieve substantive Fanny Peabody Professor Alex Rehding theory—the Golden Record raises seemingly change, its racist history needs to be was Robert Samels Visiting scholar (virtual) infinite philosophical, biological, and musical at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana Uni- questions.