Boston Hybrid Musics: Introduction: The Project and its Authors

Welcome to Boston Hybrid Musics!

This website was developed as part of the following course:

CFA MU827: Special Topics in Musicology “Hybridity and Transculturation”

Prof. David G. Hebert, PhD - Boston University, Spring 2008

Course Description: This course examines how new musical fusions arise from cross-cultural contact. Sociological and aesthetic perspectives are used to explore the changing artistry and identity of musicians in Asia and the southern hemisphere, as well as how the music industry, governmental, and educational institutions respond to globalization and the emergence of new musical practices.

http://bu.edu

Our Final Project
The final project for this course is to document examples of urban hybrid musical traditions in the greater Boston area. Rather than formal research, these brief studies for the purpose of this course are best regarded as a fusion of narrative inquiry and cultural critique, akin to scholarly journalism. Projects will be posted on this website, using text, image and sound files, and links, enabling visitors to learn about some unique and interesting musical practices that may be found in the Boston area in 2008.

Click HERE for the Table of Contents.

The following Boston University graduate students have participated in this course:

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Erica Yennior

Erica Yennior began her musical career as a self-taught pianist and accompanist in her hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She moved to Boston after high school to attend the Berklee College of Music. While at Berklee, she majored in Music Synthesis, focusing her studies on digital audio editing, sound design, and MIDI sequencing. After graduating from Berklee summa cum laude, Erica spent several years as studio manager of Cybersound Recording Studio in Boston. Her experience at Cybersound included administrative duties, client relations, audio transfer, and voice-over recording.

In 2002 Erica made the decision to change careers and returned to Berklee to complete coursework for her Massachusetts teacher license in music education. Erica is now an Elementary Music Specialist in the Westwood Public Schools, teaching kindergarten through Grade 5 general music, as well as Grade 5 chorus and drama. She holds Levels 1, 2, and 3 Orff Schulwerk certification, and has a deep interest in African American musical traditions. She is currently completing her graduate studies in Music Education at the Boston University College of Fine Arts.

Outside of her elementary music classroom, Erica teaches private piano lessons to children of varying ability levels. A former competitive figure skater, she has also worked as an ice skating instructor. She currently lives with her husband Joel in Natick, Massachusetts. Joel, a trombonist with Boston’s Either/Orchestra, has inspired Erica’s recent interest in the music of Ethiopia.

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Yi Liu

Beginning at a young age with piano lessons from her mother in Shanghai, mainland China, Yi Liu continued her musical studies with pianist Chen Meng Xian who graduated from Shanghai Conservatory. Later, Liu was accepted to the Beijing Central Conservatory as a harp major under the tutorledge of harp teacher Zou Yin. After graduation Liu served as a professional harpist in Beijing

Yi Liu then traveled to the United States to further her education. She continued harp studies with Lucile Lawrence and earned a Master degree in Music Education from Boston University, Massachusetts state certified to teach music in the public schools grades pre-K through 12. At this time, Ms. Liu is in her 14th year of teaching in the Greater Boston area and is taking further graduate level courses in Music Education at Boston University.

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Katherine Baltrush

Katherine Baltrush, soprano, received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Voice Performance from the College of Fine Arts at Boston University in May of 2007. A student of Phyllis Hoffman, Ms. Baltrush performed in opera scenes and sang regularly under conductors Ann Howard Jones and David Hoose as part of her undergraduate work. Ms. Baltrush consistently appeared on the Dean's List throughout her undergraduate career, is a member of the Golden Key International Honors Society, and was recently admitted as a member to the National Scholars Honor Society, all in recognition of her high level academic performance.

Ms. Baltrush has also been active as a music administrator. During her undergraduate studies, she served as the Music Program Administrator of the Marsh Chapel Choir at Boston University

under Music Director, Scott Allan Jarrett. In this capacity she organized several concerts a year, including a performance of Handel's oratorio Saul in 2006 and a performance of Bach's St. John Passion in the same year. This was all in addition to weekly rehearsals and Sunday morning services. In the summer of 2006, Ms. Baltrush was the Librarian and Assistant Manager at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute (of which she is an alumnus) for the Young Artist Orchestra where she had the pleasure of working with conductors James Gaffigan and Federico Cortese.

She is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Musicology from Boston University. She has written on a wide variety of topics ranging from such diverse topics as Ravel's Shéhérazade to David Bowie. For Dr. Hebert's course and this website, she is currently working on Arabic music in Boston, particularly the work of Kareem Roustom.

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Jane Leggiero

Jane Leggiero is pursuing a combined Master degree in musicology and historical performance. She did her undergraduate work at Oberlin College, where she studied musicology, including a

directed study in music of the English Chapel Royal under the auspices of Dr. Steven Plank. Jane enjoys learning about music in ways that do not conform to the status quo, and took a Music and Embodied Cognition class at Oberlin which dealt with the ways in which humans physically and mentally interact with the music they hear. This class introduced Jane to one of her areas of particular interest, namely modern electronic dance music. Jane studied baroque cello with Catherina Meints at Oberlin, and continues her studies in Boston with Sarah Freiberg Ellison. Jane is an active performer in early music circles, and enjoys collaborative music making of all kinds. She is currently preparing a recital of music written for the five string cello.

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Dave Adams

Dave Adams graduated from the University of Southern Maine School of Music in 2002 with a degree in Jazz Performance where he studied jazz and classical saxophone. He is an original member of the nationally touring, Boston-based funk band Addison Groove Project (AGP), winner of the 2004 and 2005 Boston Music Award for Best Funk Band. Dave toured extensively with AGP for four years. He has studied with Bill Street, Christopher Oberholtzer, and Ryan Parker. Dave currently works at the Career Development Office at the Boston University School of Law and teaches the Jazz Workshop at The Boston University College of Fine Arts, while he pursues a Masters in Music Education at BU.

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Sheerin Hosseini

Sheerin Hosseini is a graduate student at Boston University pursing a Master’s Degree in Music Education. In 2007 she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in music with a concentration in music education and a minor in sociology from "UMass Boston". At the University of Massachusetts, she studied piano with Timothy McFarland, horn with Anne Howarth, and played French horn in the UMass Boston Chamber Orchestra. Sheerin is a member of the Alpha Lamda Delta National Honor Society, and the Golden Key International Honor Society, and a past member of the Beacon Leadership Project at UMass Boston. Sheerin was nominated for the JFK award by the College of Liberal Arts and was one of two students nominated for the Jack Kent Cooke scholarship by UMass Boston in 2007.

Sheerin currently teaches private music lessons in piano, flute, and French horn in Malden, Cambridge, and at the Timeline Music School in Wakefield, Massachusetts. In addition, she volunteers as a French horn instructor for the Malden Public Schools. Sheerin has been passionate about music from a young age, deciding in elementary school that she wanted to go on to study music in college. She decided that she wanted to become a public school music teacher as high school student, and became particularly interested in teaching instrumental music. Since then, Sheerin has consistently pursued this path and holds initial licensure to teach K-12 music in Massachusetts; she would like to teach either middle school instrumental or general music. In particular, Sheerin is interested in using music as a tool to help at risk youth and would like to one day open a non-profit music school.

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Megan Felts

Megan Felts began her love of music at a very early age, enjoying 'playing' on her great aunt and uncle's player piano in her hometown of Juneau, Alaska. At age four she began taking piano lessons, which ultimately revealed her passion for singing. Megan attended Berklee College of Music as a voice principle, where she graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Music Education in May 2007. She is currently attending Boston University's College of Fine Arts for a graduate degree in Music Education, and lives in Norwood, Massachusetts with her husband Brandon and their dog.

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Professor David G. Hebert

David G. Hebert (PhD, University of Washington) is a music teacher educator and ethnomusicologist who has taught for Seattle Public Schools and universities in Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Finland, and the USA. Born in the 1970s, he is among the most widely published and cited music researchers of his generation. With cross-cultural interests that include musical creativity, transculturation / hybridity, online learning, popular music, competition, and musical identity, he serves in editorial roles for International Journal of Education and the Arts, Research and Issues in Music Education, and Research in New Zealand Performing Arts. Dr. Hebert is author of Wind Bands and Cultural Identity in Japanese Schools (forthcoming, Springer), the first scholarly book to identify and describe the world’s largest music competition. Other recent projects include the first research studies of Maori brass bands, New Zealand Tongan bands, patriotism in music education of various nations, and management of online music education programs. He has received grants from Simpson Humanities Center, National Band Association, Japan Ministry of Education, Arts Council of New Zealand, and United States Department of Education. In addition to being an instrumental conductor, he is active as a jazz trumpeter, vocalist, and songwriter, and recently recorded a jazz CD at Tokyo JVC Studios with vocalist Midori Takamura and jazz pianist Johnny Todd. He has recently accepted a new position as Professor of Music at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, and as Visiting Research Scholar with Nichibunken, a division of Japan's National Institutes for the Humanities, in Kyoto. Please visit sociomusicology.blogspot.com for more information about Dr. Hebert.

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The class also invited Prof. Sarah Weiss from Yale University as a guest lecturer:

http://www.yale.edu/yalemus/people/faculty.html

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Here are some other recommended links:

http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_04/uk/edito.htm

http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofEnglish/imperial/key-concepts/Hybridity.htm

http://www.mca.org.au/web/content/view/55/6

http://www.creativecommunities.org.uk/pdf/2.3GlobMusicIden.pdf

http://bandinbostonpodcast.com/

http://wayneandwax.blogspot.com/2005/07/mashpolitik.html

http://www.bprlive.org/

http://www.yorku.ca/topia/docs/conference/Morris.pdf

http://www.people.iup.edu/rahkonen/Ethno/Readings/WorldMusic.htm