The 42nd Annual Conference of The College Music Society (CMS) Southern Chapter was my last conference as Executive Board Member for Music Theory. Although we held our conference online (via Zoom), it nonetheless included many excellent performances (prerecorded), demonstrations, papers, posters, panels, and concerts. Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings was our keynote speaker. Serving the CMS Southern Chapter in this capacity has been a fantastic experience. To all its members, my wish is that you continue to experience success, to feel fulfilled in all you do, and to have nothing but pleasant results with each completed project! While that may be an overly optimistic wish, it is sincere.
Notable compositions from this year's conference included (but were certainly not limited to) the following:
Ralph Lewis - Can’t Take You Anywhere - Stephen Marotto, cello; triggered fixed media
Kyle Vanderburg - Tape Piece - stereo acousmatic
Notable oral presentations from this year's conference included (but were certainly not limited to) the following:
Tanya Allen - "Open Educational Resources: Locating Music OER that Work for You" - We have always been in need of resources or ways to find openly licensed or public domain resources for teaching and learning, but especially in these times.
Lauren Burns Hodges - "The Virtual Music Ensemble" - There are also websites like https://musiceducationsummit.org/virtual-ensemble-experience that afford users all the fun, and NONE of the tech, so they can focus on what matters most: the music.
Erin Bennett Hibbard - "Duels at a Distance: Adapting Games to a Remote Classroom Environment" - The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us all that we’re capable of doing almost anything virtually. This also applies to distance education.
Pamela Pike - "Improving Undergraduate Self-regulation During Practice" - In these unprecedented times, strategies for instructors to promote student use of self-regulated learning strategies, which have been associated with positive academic achievement, are more important than ever!
Gerald Klickstein - "Equipping DMA Candidates to Win Tenure-Track Jobs" - Experiential learning is an effective educational tool across many academic disciplines; let's use it in applied music curricula!
Patricia Burt - "Student-Driven Music Theory: How the Question Formulation Technique Can Promote Curiosity, Agency, and Creative Course Design" - Curiosity is crucial to learning! If the QFT can empower students to become thinkers, forging into new ideas with an open-mind through inquiry and questioning, its potential value is immeasurable!
Tim Workman - "Helping Students of Any Age Match Pitch" - As a voice teacher, there are a lot of strange technical issues you have to help students overcome. Perhaps no issue is more elusive to voice teachers than that of matching pitch.
Aaron Keebaugh - "“Above the Timberline Where Nothing Grows”: The Ultra-Modernist Trajectory of Bob Graettinger" - We need to become much more familiar with complex, atonal, uncompromising, even alienating music, literature, and art if we want to adapt our psychologies to the coming trans- and eventually posthuman future.
Cordara Harper - "An Examination of Preservice School Administrators’ Self-efficacy Related to Their Evaluation of Secondary Choral Music Educators in the State of North Carolina" - Music teacher professional identity is a critical area of study!
Thomas Koch - "Teaching a Study Abroad Music and Arts Course for the General Student: Designing and Implementing a Pedagogy Inclusive of All Arts" - General Music courses should prepare knowledgeable, progressive, and culturally responsive professionals who are dedicated to addressing the current and future needs of music educators in school, community, as well as other cultural institutions. Koch's proposal seems to be a good way to do it.
Click on the link below for the full schedule, including all concert program notes, abstracts, and bios of all presenters, composers, and performers:
