While in Vancouver, British Columbia, after the College Music Society Pacific Northwest Regional Conference, I was able to spend some time with digital artist Christine Zion in her English Bay home during which--as too few have ever done--we, as artists across disciplines, took full advantage of the chance to interact. In our daily lives, in our highly professionalized artistic worlds, we tend to live among our own, writers with writers, filmmakers with filmmakers, and so on and so forth. But in Vancouver, I suddenly found myself talking for hours to a painter encountering her blank canvas, who has unique ways of approaching her own work. When composers, or poets, or playwrights, or filmmakers, or visual artists share their work, they often find resonances that lead them to invent a different path. Several times in my life, I have forged interdisciplinary relationships that have led to important collaborations. The photo is a view from her residence.
in·ter·dis·ci·pli·nar·y in(t)ərˈdis(ə)pləˌnerē/ adjective relating to more than one branch of knowledge.
ZANE GILLESPIE
After six years as Minister of Music at Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church (UMC) in Holly Springs, MS, I was recently called to continue to work to address public engagement in music participation as Director of Music Ministries at First UMC in Water Valley, MS. I am a Composer, Theorist, and member of both The College Music Society as well as The Poe Studies Association (PSA). I am also an active pianist and vocalist, specializing primarily in church music. My paper entitled ““Mesmeric Revelation”: Art as Hypnosis” has been published by the international, peer-reviewed journal Humanities. In addition, another paper of mine entitled “A Model of Triadic Post-Tonality for a Neoconservative Postmodern String Quartet by Sky Macklay” has been submitted to the peer-reviewed Music Theory journal Perspectives of New Music. At the end of February 2015, I served as Chair for the session entitled “Aesthetics and Philosophy” at The Fourth International PSA Conference in New York City. On June 21, 2014, my Quartet for Alto Saxophone and Strings, a commission from concert saxophonist Walter Hoehn, was performed as part of Concert V of the Eighth Annual Belvedere Chamber Music Festival held at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Memphis, TN. Characteristically neo-romantic (in the original sense of the word), my music earned me the Nancy Van de Vate Award for Composition three times from the University of Mississippi Department of Music. A native of Pontotoc, MS, I hold degrees from the University of Mississippi (BM; MM), and the University of Memphis (DMA) where I was the 2011 recipient of the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music's Smit Composition Award. I live in Memphis, TN.