Summer Announcements

I have two very exciting announcements to share! First, I have officially completed my comprehensive exams as part of my PhD degree requirements. The music department at York doesn’t do the traditional sit-and-write kind of exam for their comps, but rather encourages its doctoral students to explore a general research topic in their area of study that will not only demonstrate an understanding of the existing research in their field but also potentially open up avenues of research for their dissertation. To that end, for my first (oral) comprehensive I decided to research the relationship between Canadian band composers and the music publishing industry. I was able to track a re-balancing of power between publishers and composers over the last decade, accelerated by the pandemic shutdowns, which has created more space in the industry for composers to effectively publish and promote themselves. I also explored the advantages and disadvantages of self-publishing vs. traditional publishing, with some specific examples of Canadian composers who have opted for one approach or the other, or even some combination of the two. A PDF of that presentation is available here.

For my written comprehensive, I decided to explore band music programming trends in Canada over the last decade and place them in a historical context. I started by providing an historical overview of institutional efforts to influence programming. Then I analyzed programming from two different band festivals (one national and one provincial), with a focus on the proportion of gender-diverse and racialized composers being programmed over time. Finally, I attempted to assess the success of the aforementioned efforts given the results of the analysis. You can read the paper here. I am very grateful to my supervisory committee and especially Bill Thomas for their guidance throughout the comprehensive exam process. Next up: my dissertation proposal!

The second very exciting announcement is that I have been asked to cover for Dr. Gillian MacKay, my esteemed colleague at the University of Toronto, while she is on sabbatical next year - and so I will be directing the UofT Wind Ensemble and teaching one section of instrumental conducting! I have big shoes to fill but I am excited to be able to take on these new challenges and work with new groups of students.