Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Argh, I forgot to mention: two premieres this week!

 

Hi hi hello! Really quick addition to the last newsletter, which was so jam-packed I forgot to mention that I have two premieres happening this week!?

First: TONIGHT! The Mendelssohn Chorus here in Philadelphia, the greatest city on earth, is premiering a new song they commissioned from me: "Slice of Pie," with lyrics by the badass writer and activist Feminista Jones. Feminista's wry poem pulled some unexpected music out of me: I somehow wrote a jazz standard!? I'm not kidding, that's absolutely what it is, so I committed to it and threw in a trumpet, bass and drumkit. I spent a good part of my teen years learning jazz standards, idolizing Stéphane Grappelli (still do), and wishing that there were more places in the world for jazz violists, so I guess that history has at last been brought to bear.

To listen to "Slice of Pie," register here (for free) and then join us on Zoom at 7:30PM EST:



Second: FRIDAY NIGHT! A consortium of choirs led by Chorosynthesis commissioned a 19-minute multimovement work from me to commemorate the passing of the 19th Amendment: Amendment: Righting Our Wrongs. As you can probably tell from the title, it's a work that goes beyond the issue of women's suffrage to examine the many ways that voting rights have been suppressed in this country, and highlight the ongoing struggle for universal suffrage for all Americans. Texts come from Stacey Abrams, Frances Harper, Zitkála-Šá, Francis Bellam, Astrid Silva, Mary Church Terrell, various state constitutions, and I even contributed some lines myself. The choir is accompanied by solo cello which I think sounds glorious—I hope I get the chance to write for this combination again!

You can join us by heading to this Facebook Live event with Santa Monica College choirs at 7:30PM PST (10:30PM EST) this Friday:



Right, that's it! Sorry to break the occasional nature of this newsletter to send you this addendum, my bad!

<3

Melissa
 
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Saturday, December 12, 2020

Happy holidays from me and Gritty

 


Hello! Since I last wrote at the end of October, my jaw tension pain has significantly improved. What a difference an election makes! The picture of me above was taken by photographer Ryan Collerd a couple of days after the election, when I dropped everything I was doing, broke the isolation I've been keeping since March, and ran into the Philadelphia sunshine to rally outside the Convention Center where votes were being counted. Each day I spent on the streets that week was at once exhilarating, exhausting, energizing, and enraging, filled with solidarity and joy, but also tinged with grief at what we're living through. And every day, we danced. For hours. Non-stop. We danced like we were casting spells with our bodies. We danced like the Chosen One in the Rite of Spring. For real, I haven't danced like that since I was 25.

Several journalists asked to talk to me, which resulted in a quote in Mother Jones (!!!), and an interview by AFP which was syndicated to news outlets around the world, including ... Yahoo Sports? Hahaha, that's a first! So just in case my body of artistic work doesn't make my political opinions 100% clear, I'm now on the record in the press making explicitly anti-Trump statements. Let's hope America doesn't devolve further into fascism anytime soon.

A bunch of TV outlets also broadcast footage of me and my Gritty sign dancing at the rally. Matt was so proud he hunted down screen grabs of my appearances and combined them into a graphic (yes, the BBC censored my sign):



I suspect we'll be suffering through election news through January 20 and even beyond, but I have a lot more hope right now, and a renewed resolve to keep pushing and contributing and working toward a better future however I can. 

Speaking of work, there is plenty of news on that front also.

 

Watch the Gonzales Cantata now!




The first-ever film version of the Gonzales Cantata went live during the election, and if you missed the premiere, never fear, you can still view it here. Watch for free, or pick up a paid Invision subscription to support the performers and company. You can also see a conversation between me and director Corinne Hayes in which we talk about the cantata's relevance to our current political climate. And if my admittedly biased recommendation isn't enough to inspire you to click, take the word of positive reviews from DC Metro Theater Arts ("They have turned an ordinary, if contentious, political event into a musical blend of satire and drama.") and DC Theatre Scene ("I was deeply moved at the end"). Or, you know, maybe check out my FIRST SIGNIFICANT WRITE-UP IN THE NEW YORK TIMES ("Dunphy gets laughs from the contrast between bureaucratic blather and Handelian arioso... By design, the comedy butts up uncomfortably against policies"). Yeah, I guess I kinda buried the lede there. It's been a big month.
 
 

Commission for Voces8: "Halcyon Days"


I wrote a song for Voces8!!! "Halcyon Days" was premiered in their Live from London series on December 5, and you can watch the entire concert here ($15 for a single ticket, or consider springing for the whole season). The two-hour show also includes the superb Oakwood University choir, the Aeolians—I saw them perform at ACDA a few years ago, and it was life-changing—and premieres of new commissions from five other composers, including my friend Jocelyn Hagen, and baritone Roderick Williams (whom I had the opportunity to meet on Zoom, and he's so lovely!).

In a review, Opera Today called my song "Rutter-esque" which has me very tickled, especially given the semi-famous photo I took with him at the aforementioned ACDA.

If you'd like a sneak peek of "Halcyon Days," here's a snippet:
Still pinching myself that this happened...
And the sheet music is already published by Edition Peters and out now! You can get it in digital format or octavo on Sheet Music Plus:
 


Come, My Tan-Faced Children presented by Vanessa Isiguen and Portland Opera


Earlier this week, soprano Vanessa Isiguen sang my Walt Whitman setting, with Nicholas Fox on piano, for Portland Opera's Live from the Hampton Opera Center series, and you can watch her stunning performance on YouTube here:
"Come, My Tan-Faced Children" starts at 24:40, but you should listen to the whole thing; Vanessa is a powerhouse!
And here's a round-up of other various videos that became available since my last newsletter:
Singing City invited me to participate in a panel on the topic of composing for choirs with conductor Jeffrey Brillhart and fellow composers Carol Barnett and Kile Smith.
Men's chorus Chor Leoni's artistic director Erick Lichte and I had a conversation about my work for their series, Chor Leoni Inside...
...and the supplemental deeper dive, Chor Leoni Further Inside.
Mansfield University's women's chorus recorded a beautiful (masked, socially distant) performance of my setting of Nikita Gill's poem, "Wild Embers," introducing it with the story of Joan of Arc. (Stay tuned also for the next intro, which references the Abigail Adams "Remember the ladies" letter. More about that in a future newsletter, shhh...
Carleton College choir performed "#UnitedWeDream" from American DREAMers, with introduction and photography by poet Claudia D. Hernandez. Earlier, the choir invited Claudia and I to participate in a Zoom workshop, which was such a delight! Claudia is one of the most inspiring, warm, wonderful people I've ever had the pleasure to work with.


On a more serious note: Zach Finkelstein, Dana Lynne Varga, and Hillary LaBonte recently published their article "Excluded, Penalized, Indebted, Harassed: A Study of Systemic Discrimination Against Women in Opera" on The Middleclass Artist, and it's an important read. Anyone who has spoken to me about this issue knows that it's been central to my outlook as a composer since I was an undergrad (it was a major reason that I reversed the genders of the roles in the Gonzales Cantata), and I'm honored to have my rant on the topic from a New Music Box cover profile quoted in the study. Systemic sexism in professional music fields is at last being analyzed and discussed openly and candidly, along with systemic racism, and I'm heartened to witness how pro-actively the next generation of artists is committed to addressing and changing this industry. I don't think these problems will be solved overnight, but if we have courage and resolve, I have confidence that things will get better. And coming from a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist like me, that's not a glib prediction!
 

One more thing: because our Airbnb is pretty much completely dead right now (and rightly so, please stay home if you can), I'm making up some of the difference by using the Boghouse Etsy shop to sell some surplus archaeological artifacts from our 250-year-old privy that we dug late last year. And bear with me here ... the most responsible things I can deaccession are animal teeth. Yes, 18th-century animal teeth, packaged beautifully in a gift box and ready for you to give to that oddball loved one who needs a really unique holiday gift. You can purchase our privy teeth here, and if you think I've lost my mind, joke's on you: so far I have almost made up for this month's Airbnb loss! I'm fascinated with these teeth myself, and I knew there'd be others like me out there! Here's a sassy-looking pig premolar, for instance:



Supplies are very finite, so if you're interested, get them before all the other weirdo teeth enthusiasts snap them up.
 

I hope you have a very boring holiday season, because honestly that's all I am longing for right now, dull, relaxing, blessed boredom. Doesn't that sound amazing? No more excitement until 2021. It's my wish for all of us. Be totally bored. May nothing cause your adrenaline to spike or your heart to race or your breath to catch for the rest of the month at least. Bliss.

Cheers,

Melissa
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Tuesday, October 27, 2020

2020 summary: Does your jaw hurt? My jaw really hurts

 

I don't need to tell you: 2020 is A Lot™

I haven't sent out one of these newsletter e-mails since April because, to be perfectly frank, I've been overwhelmed and panicked for most of the intervening months. It feels like I'm riding a rollercoaster with a safety harness that isn't properly latched, and I'm watching other riders hanging on for dear life, and nobody is enjoying themselves one bit.

Can I offer you some distracting good news and videos? Maybe that will help? The weirdest thing about this year for me has been that my career has ascended against expectations for my industry and artform, which has led to some really conflicting emotions. I'm being given more opportunities to write music than ever, and performers have released plenty of recordings in lieu of live premieres. I've participated in a multitude of online lectures and workshops and discussions, both public and private, especially as the issue of systemic racism was more widely recognized this summer as the urgent issue it's so obviously been all along. I'm doing more teaching than ever before, all online of course. I joke that my real job title now is Professional Zoomer. It's funny; in my early twenties I flirted with the idea of becoming a television host, and now we're all forced to be presenters in our individual home TV studios.

But onto the distracting good news and videos. There is quite a lot!
 





I couldn't be happier about this! On Election Day beginning at 5PM Eastern, INVISION Opera is presenting the first-ever film version of the Gonzales Cantata. The setting? C-SPAN in Hell. It's perfect. I also arranged the instrumental parts for organ for this production. Confession: when the idea of arranging the cantata for organ was first raised, I wasn't 100% sold, but the second I started trying it out in Sibelius, I was OVER THE MOON. In fact, I can't believe I never thought of it before! Large swathes of the Gonzales Cantata are homages to Handel, so of course organ accompaniment sounds absolutely correct. And it's especially appropriate given that 2020 has felt far heavier and more imposing than 2007, a mood that an organ can carry off better than just about any other instrument. So after you have voted next Tuesday (for those of you voting in person), if you need something other than sanity-shredding news and commentary to watch on November 3, tune in!

(I'm personally convinced the election won't be decided that night, so you probably won't be doing yourself any favors by gluing yourself to the immediate results anyway.)
 



TOMORROW NIGHT: Tune in to the Mendelssohn Club's Dialogues with Dominick for a conversation between their artistic director Dominick DiOrio and composers Texu Kim and yours truly. I just wrote them a commission setting a poem from badass West Philly writer Feminista Jones, and it's really different to just about anything I've written before. The best way I can describe it is: a doo-wop jazz standard for choir, trumpet, bass, and drums that should get your toes tapping. Sometimes even when the world is falling apart, you gotta dance, you know? Tickets are $12 ($6 for students), but if that's a hardship for you, let me know, as I have a couple of comps to give away.
 
TONIGHT, Chor Leoni is releasing an interview of me by artistic director Erick Lichte, so tune in at 7PM Pacific Time (10PM Eastern). We span a wide range of topics and you'll get to hear several of my works ... and keep your eyes peeled for a possible collaboration with Chor Leoni in the future. If you miss the launch tonight, you should be able to watch the episode after the fact.


ALICE TIERNEY NEWS


In my last newsletter, I announced a brand new commission from Oberlin Conservatory: an archaeology opera! We had our first libretto reading this past weekend, and I can't wait to get stuck into the music proper this winter. If you want to read more about the commission, check out the official Oberlin press release. And there is a lovely article about the project in Classical Post, which refers to me as a "star composer" (hoooo not sure I'm quite ready for that label and all it implies, but I'm blushing)!
 
Coming up in December: the premiere of my first (ooh, a glimmer of optimism!) commission for Voces8. YES I SAID VOCES8!!!! Many squees. I wrote a bittersweet winter carol for them, with lyrics by the librettist for Alice Tierney, Jacqueline Goldfinger. Catch the concert online on December 5.
And here are a bunch of recently released videos of my compositions for you to watch at your leisure:
Cantus performed a new TTBB arrangement of It's strange about stars for their COVID-19 sessions. They originally performed this last year at their Christmas concert on the theme of the Little Match Girl.
Lara St. John made an amazing video for my solo violin piece kommós, which was shown during GatherNYC's Mindful Minutes series—along with a solo work by one of my students, 14-year-old Adah Kaplan! I'm so proud!
I am so in love with what Amy Petrongelli and Eric Dluzniewski created for my solo voice + looper piece June #1. It's not just a gorgeous performance, but a gorgeous film, and has been really inspiring me to think about how to present music during COVID.
This new commission for Amuse Singers, Set Myself Free, also has lyrics by Jackie Goldfinger and received a virtual premiere. The piece commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
National Concerts paired me with lyricist Charles Anthony Silvestri for this new commission, Eight of Swords, inspired by the Pamela Coleman Smith tarot card illustration. The virtual premiere was given by the by SJSU Choraliers and Kirby Chamber Singers.
Violinist Cheng-Wei Hsieh also pulled out all the stops for his video of my solo violin and chiptunes piece, Theme and Variables: Scallops and Bollocks for Tea, check it out!
Resonance Ensemble edited together a video of their 2018 commission, LISTEN, with a new introduction by me. Content warning: sexual assault. I watched the performance again for the first time in a long while today after the ACB announcement and had a good cry, so if you need some catharsis right now, maybe this is the video for you.
The Thirteen released this premiere from last year of The Apotheosis of Apollo, a work about the wonder of the moon landing, with text by Clinton Kelly. The whole concert is absolutely worth a listen (the Thirteen are truly fabulous), and Apotheosis starts at 41:30.
Here's Gettysburg College's Audeamus singing Wild Embers in a virtual performance which took the place of their end-of-year concert. I was told by the directors that the singers were given the choice of which song to record, and I'm so honored they chose mine.


There have been even move videos than these, but I'm worried about this e-mail becoming too long already. I'm overwhelmed with anxiety just trying to remember everything that's happened in the last six months. So to sum up some other tidbits of news round these parts in a whole bunch of quick "I" statements:

            -   I joined the boards of Lyric Fest and the Young Women's Composer Camp
            -   I joined advisory boards for Cincinnati Song Initiative and Tonality
            -   Speaking of Cincinnati Song Initiative, I had a fun time recently doing a Composers and Cocktails interview, mojito in hand. Subscribe to their digital platform to watch, and for a lot of other awesome content.
            -   I will be on a panel for Opera Philadelphia on November 9 about reimagining the opera canon
            -   I was on a panel about intersectionality for American Composers Forum
            -   And another panel titled "Beyond Diversifying Repertoire" for Choral Arts New England
            -   In addition to my adjunct position at Rutgers, I joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania this semester, teaching a graduate composition seminar about opera. 


I think that's it for now. Please please please stay safe and sane in the coming weeks, choose democracy, and I'll see you all on the other side <3

Melissa
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Thursday, April 23, 2020

The cooped-up composer

 

Well.

Last time Claris and I sent a newsletter, the world was a different place. Look at that happy picture above! That's me and members of the music faculty of Gonzaga University at the end of February, hamming it up during the last residency I imagine I will do until at least 2021, although I didn't know it at the time. I loved connecting with the students in classes and rehearsals, and watching from the wings as they performed an amazing concert on the theme of women's suffrage and activism (if you're curious to hear more about the residency, listen to my two-part interview on Spokane Public Radio here and here).

Since then, of course, a global pandemic has hit, an event that I've speculated for most of my life about as a layperson interested in science and morbid worst-case scenarios, although I hoped I wouldn't ever see one for myself. About six days after this photo was taken, I developed a worrying dry cough and shortness of breath, followed by a low-level fever. After over a week of those symptoms, I was given a COVID-19 test which eventually came back negative, but I was under strict quarantine for several weeks, and have barely left my house since. A lot of people have expressed relief that the test came back negative, but I think that's backwards! A positive test result would have meant relative certainty that Matt and I will survive this disease—plus I would have been first in line to donate plasma and contribute to finding a treatment or vaccine. Now I'm just holed up feeling anxious and powerless, and wondering what will happen next.

Like a lot of artists, COVID-19 has had an enormous impact on my career and income in a short period of time. In addition to the several cancelled residencies and teaching gigs this spring, many upcoming premieres and performances have been postponed indefinitely or cancelled, including a premiere at Strathmore, a premiere by Amuse Singers in NYC, and the first-ever performance of several of my works by the Choral Arts Society of Washington. My secondary source of income, an Airbnb on our second floor, has predictably gone from near-100% occupancy to 100% vacancy. Matt's taken a paycut to help keep his employer afloat, and all my private teaching has moved online, which is always a poor substitute for face-to-face learning.

Instead of a concert, the Choral Arts Society of Washington interviewed me for a series published on their website. We had a great conversation about political music and of course a little archaeology.
Similarly, National Concerts, who commissioned Eight of Swords, my first collaboration with Tony Silvestri that was to be premiered at Strathmore this month, instead interviewed conductor and composer participants for Facebook Live. There were many disappointed student choristers from around the country who were supposed to have flown into Washington DC for this concert.
In this midst of all this, it feels strange to celebrate good news, but I do have some? I've been told it can be nice to hear some good news even (or especially) at moments of crisis when it seems like nothing is good. So if it doesn't feel too sacrilegious, here's a little from me.
SHINY NUGGETS OF GOOD NEWS IN THE NIGHTSOIL



I won an Opera America Discovery Grant

First, a little background: until this moment, I had never won a grant in my life. In fact, I joked that I was Grant Poison. I guess I can't make that joke anymore, because to my utter shock, I have been given one of the more prestigious grants in my particular field. Opera America's Discovery Grant awards seven female composers each cycle with funding to develop a new opera project.

Read the full press release here!

Curious about my opera, Alice Tierney? I'm working on it with librettist/playwright and dear friend and fellow Philadelphian Jacqueline Goldfinger, and dramaturg Julia Bumke, and director Christopher R. Mirto. The title and inspiration is taken from a true story about a 19th-Century 45-year-old "dissipated woman" which you would already know all about if you listen to my podcast The Boghouse (specifically episode 13, but you really have to listen to all of it to understand how/why I found the story). But here's the twist: the opera is not really about Alice Tierney! It's an ARCHAEOLOGY OPERA! I have figured out a way to bring both sides of my life together!!!!

More details about the opera will come out in the coming weeks, but currently I'm still hammering out some details with the commissioner, so stay tuned.
 



The Boghouse was reviewed in The Public Historian



At the end of  February, our irreverent amateur archaeology podcast was reviewed in an academic journal, a turn of events that I never would have predicted a year ago when we first started recording our adventures in audio form. You can read the entire review in this PDF. My little academy-trained heart couldn't be more thrilled that my hobby is getting this kind of attention, and that my potty mouth (see what I did there) has been enshrined in a journal published by UC Press and distributed on e.g. Project MUSE.

 

Waves of Gallipoli and If Thou Wilt Be Perfect were published by EC Schirmer



I've mentioned these upcoming publications in past newsletters, but two new choral works of mine, Waves of Gallipoli and If Thou Wilt Be Perfect are now available on the EC Schirmer website, which means you can check out the scores. And here are some preview recordings from the always fabulous Saint Louis Chamber Chorus:


Online concerts are happening

Of course, it's not the same thing as attending a concert with a live audience, but I'm so delighted that several incredible performers have been programming my works and broadcasting them from their living rooms. 
 
Soprano Maureen Batt
Crossing Borders: Living Room Edition
Just you, me, and your device 

The program (in no particular order):
Girlfriends (Stephen Bachicha) for solo sop
June #2 (Melissa Dunphy) for looper pedal and sop
La Guardavoces (Melissa Vargas Franco) for solo sop
The Bliss of Fatigue (Monica Pearce*) for wine glass, toy piano, and sop
Ice Kaleidoscope (Bob Bauer*) for sop and electroacoustics
Quatrain (Daniel Gardner*) for sop and electronics
For broken and tired am I (Matthew Emery*) for soprano and piano (feat. Cheryl Duvall - Pianist on piano)
Nightingale Songs** (Rosśa Crean) for solo sop

*Canadian Composer
**World première

The concert is part of the recital series Crossing Borders, which puts Canadian music together and in dialogue with music from other countries. The series pushes geographical, musical, and metaphorical thresholds. This program includes works that have been on previous season’s programs as well as a world première.

With sounds of ice crackling, to dreaming of blissful sun basking, to contemplating a blurred reality, this program of living classical contemporary composers explores themes of compassion, isolation, and joy
VIOLIN CHANNEL LIVING ROOM LIVE | We’re coming to you live from New York City this afternoon for a living room livestream with Canadian violin soloist Lara St John | Today’s program featuring: Gabriela Lena Frank’s ‘Tarqueada' from ‘Suite Mestiza’ for Solo Violin, Bach’s ‘Giga’ from the 2nd Solo Partita in D Minor, tunes from Cape Breton, Canada (with Acadian chair dancing), the Presto from Bartok’s Solo Sonata, tunes from Romania (with ankle bells) - and Melissa Dunphy’s ‘Kommos’

The Violin Channel is committed to reminding people that live art will still exist even in these uncertain times | If you are enjoying this performance and you like to support Lara’s preferred charity, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, you can donate now at: https://www.glfcam.com/donate
#COVID19 #DontStopTheMusic #LivingRoomLivestream #OneCommunity 
See Less
And one heads-up: the divine mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis is performing the work I wrote for her last year, Come My Tan-Faced Children in a recital for the LA Opera series #laoathome on Monday, April 27 at 4pm PST and 7pm ET. Raehann is entitling the virtual recital, 'Underscored' and featuring composers that are underrepresented in classical music. Look at this badass spread with my picture included! Mark your calendar and look for it on the LA Opera Facebook page on Monday.

Image may contain: 13 people, including Melissa Dunphy


I've joined the online faculty of the Young Women Composers Camp

The Young Women Composers Camp is a summer program for female and nonbinary composers that I have enthusiastically supported since I heard about it, and I'm excited to be joining their teaching stable this summer, offering composition lessons to high school and undergraduate students interested in composition (no former experience required). If you know any young composers or composers-to-be, send them to the YWCC website to apply; tuition is a sliding scale, and we're really trying to make this program as accessible as possible.
 

SOME THOUGHTS AND IDEAS FOR FELLOW MUSIC EDUCATORS

I posted this on Facebook at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, as a suggestion to those of you who are retooling your curricula to encompass social distancing, although actually this is a retool that I think has been overdue in music education for a long time. Please feel free to adapt/send this to any other music educators, as I just want to spread the word about these ideas.

I have been giving versions of this rant in seminars and colloquia for years because of a strange gap I see in music education which really bothers me. Bear with me for a moment. Music is similar in many ways to an expressive language, right? It has grammar, vocabulary, literature, it communicates ideas and emotions. OK so imagine that you are studying French. But for some reason, the way you are being taught French is not by speaking or writing your own words in this new language. No, instead, your teachers tell you to learn and memorize the words of long-dead French men such as Proust and Voltaire and Baudelaire, then once a semester you are required to stand in front of a crowd of people and recite, word-for-word, those texts. Everyone in the audience knows how it's supposed to sound, so if you mess up the pronunciation of a vowel, they tut-tut and you have points taken off your final grade. But if someone were to ask you to describe your hopes and fears in French, you wouldn't be able to find the words. If you were asked where you come from and who you are, you couldn't give them an answer. You could only recite something about Parisian madeleines. You have never even been encouraged to say the most basic sentences of your own in this new language.

Can you really say you are fluent in French? This is a weird way to learn, right? So why on earth is this the primary way we teach Western Classical Music?

Let me put something to you. Change your curriculum to center student composition. In my teaching practice, I had the most success with this in my aurals class. Take your Ottman and throw it in the trash. You don't need sight-singing books when you have an entire classroom full of composers who can come up with never-before-heard melodies to sight sing. Have the students swap with each other and sing each other's melodies. Trust me, hearing someone else bring your music to life, even the simplest stuff, is a composer's number one joy. When I did this in a college-level non-major aurals class, my students actually enjoyed aurals. They did extra work! Several of them expressed a desire to begin composing or arranging for the first time! Think about that. They enjoyed ... aurals.

I firmly believe that this approach can also be adapted to other disciplines, yes, even performing ensemble disciplines. Have your students write music for soloists or small groups in the ensemble to sing or play. Have them respond to the current crisis with music! Composition is something they can potentially do while practicing social distancing, and solo performances can be recorded, or multitracked for smaller groups (lay down one track in an mp3, and have other students record their part while listening to it).

Your students will get so much out of this, and not just during a pandemic. They will engage with music far more than they already do. When the restrictions are lifted, you might even have amazing pieces that your ensemble can perform in person, and think about what it will mean to these students that it's their *own* thoughts being musically expressed, not some dead European dude they don't know. When this crisis is over, you could do a whole concert of student works.

Consider it, please! Change the way you teach music. Stop the ossification of our art form and encourage new voices. I know a lot of you were never given the chance to compose yourselves, but you can give your students that opportunity, and what better time than now?

That's all from me for now. Till next time, wash your hands, avoid touching your face, stay at home if you can, and be well as literally as possible.

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