Published (Alice)

Well, Aaron is completely right on the whole dangers and difficulties of group blogging. I myself have checked back here frequently hoping to see new posts and have been reluctant to post more myself since I already have at least two posts up and don't want to feel like an blog hog. However, in the absence of new contributions, I will post a little update about my own musical exploits since April.

I am really excited to say it is now official. I have been published. My SATB choral piece "If Thou Wilt, Remember" has been released through Lighthouse Music Publications. That would be our wonderful music librarian and Faculty choral arranging professor Jeff Smallman's company.

This has been something that has been in the works over the summer and it has just now been released, much to my family's and my own excitment. I originally wrote the piece as my choral arranging course final project and it has astounded me how far a term project has taken me. The piece itself is a setting of Christina Rossetti's poem "Song" and includes pinao accompaniment and obeo obligato. If anyone is interested in hearing a short clip of it or wants to look at a bit of the score, check it out at Lighthouse Music Publications.

Oh, and one last thing, for those of you who are like me and are still kicking around London, come see me sing Tessa in this year's Musical Theatre Productions run of Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Gondoliers". It's running from Novmeber 12-21 at the Palace Theatre and will be an awesome show full of mistaken identities, mixed up lovers and biting social commentary on class and marraige all disguised in witty, bright musical comedy.

Well, that's all for now. Now someone else post something!

The disorder of the general (Aaron James)

If everyone is guilty, then no one is guilty. The particular is again lost in the disorder of the general.

Hannah Arendt, letter to Hans Magnus Enzenberger, 1964.

Arendt was likely referring to the dangers of group blogging. When a single writer maintains a blog, that person feels a certain responsibility to post new content on a regular basis. When, however, a group of several dozen recent B. Mus. graduates maintains a blog, no single person is individually responsible for generating its content. Ipso facto, if that blog should go some two months without any updates, the culpability for this neglect rests on the B. Mus. graduates as a group. This situation, of course, precisely corresponds to the situation in a totalitarian state: because totalitarian governments treat the people as a mass of interchangeable drones, individual citizens enter a state of paralysis. Discouraged from taking individual responsibility for their actions, they become disconnected from the political arena, follow orders without question, and never update their blogs.

We, on the other hand, do not live in a totalitarian state, and so there is no reason why this blog could not yet become a thriving social forum, abuzz with controversial opinions, interesting news, and automatically-generated advertisements in the comment threads. The only thing required for this to happen, however, is that each of us exercise our democratic right to contribute to society. Don't wait for some nebulous group of "other people" to post to the blog! Rather, post thou something thyself, and thou shalt be richly rewarded.

Having lectured you all on the importance of updating the blog, I must now sheepishly admit that I myself have nothing of particular interest to say; it's bad enough for me to come up with enough clever ideas for posts on my own blog. Other members of this class undoubtedly have had far more interesting summers than I - let's hear from them.

Educational Boot Camp? (Dave Lacalamita)

I was sent this link by Nick Hyatt and would love to know what you all think.

Archaic? Or effective? Can it be both?

- Dave

Taming of the Shrew is Coming! (Alice Hietala)

Hi Everyone, though this isn't strictly music related, I suppose it does have to do with recent grad activities. I'm in the upcoming Summer Shakespeare production of The Taming of the Shrew. I've got four character roles. It should be fun.

Anyway, for those of you still kicking around London in June, come see the play. We just had our first read-through of the script and meeting of the cast and already I can tell you it's going to be a fabulous show!

The show runs from June 23-27 in the evening. We haven't picked an exact location , but it'll be outside on campus somewhere. I'll post again closer to the date with more details.

I hope to see some of you there. Shrew is a wild, funny, dirty, somewhat violent and slightly controversial show, so you know you'll have fun!

-Alice

Alice Add's her Two Cents (Alice Hietala)

Hello Everyone,

This is a wonderful idea. Blogging is a great way to add your own two cents whenever you have time without the all the constraints of a Facebook group. So, a big thank you to Erika for starting the idea of keeping in touch and to David for actually starting this blog. In the complete craziness that was the last day of classes, I pretty much forgot it was the last day of classes and didn't realize that of all the people I was casually seeing around the faculty as normal, many of them I would never see again. I didn't say good-bye to many of them, which has made me really sad (especially since I'm delaying my graduation until the Fall, so I won't necessarily see everyone in June). So I really like this whole idea.

I myself started my own blog about my various artistic endeavors a few months ago. I've been writing about many of my thoughts and experiences in my last few months of school and I'm excited to contribute to this blog as well. So, take a look at mine if you like and if I don't see many of you in person for a while, I'll at least be seeing you around cyberspace.

-Alice

Inaugural Address (David Lacalamita)

In the spirit of Erika North's email, I created this blog and Gmail account in the hopes that we can continue the dialogue that defined many of our experiences here, and to continue to keep in touch with one another as we spread ourselves across the globe. For the records, here is Erika's email:

Hello Graduating class of 2009 and anyone else who may be interested,

I have been talking to many of you and many of you feel what I am feeling, the worry about the potential loss of brain cells post graduation, as well as the sadness at the potential loss of communication between all of us.

I would like to dispel this potential by starting an email dialogue whereby we could communicate with one another about interesting books we read, pertaining to anything music related from performance to education to philosophy. As well, we could use this as a tool to send recordings of our performances or our classes performances or compositions that we have written. Other things we could include are peoples masters and PHD thesises or articles that we write, or music we like and find interesting. Basically a resource to keep connected and keep learning.

I was thinking we could do this through email or facebook. Thoughts on that? Also, if we decide to do this through email I will need you to send me your new email addresses as our uwo addresses will be deleted soon :(

Please let me know your thoughts and if you are interested.

Study or procrastinate hard and hope to hear from you.

Erika :)

I'm planning on starting up a website in the near future that could play the same role as this blog, but for now, this is the easiest substitute.

Ideally, this can be a place where people can drop a line when something significant happens in your life (like getting your first real job, moving to a new country, travelling, getting married etc). For those who are interested, it could become a serious forum for discussion of important issues, musical or otherwise. In fact, it may be even more productive than some of the late-night conversations that I've experienced here in that there will be an actual record of the process.

Blogs are easy to keep tabs on with RSS feeds. If you don't know what that is, I'll just explain that it's a way of keeping tabs on when a site has been updated (so that you don't have to check all the time - only when something new is posted) and leave the figuring out to you if you so choose.

Who knows how long this will last, but it might be nice to have available. We can post links to other websites, our own personal blogs, interesting articles, etc. As a communal space, there is potential for this to become quite messy, but after an initial rush, I'm sure things will subside and become more manageable. Also, for the sake of clarity...:

• Please post your name at the end of your posts and perhaps in the Title as I've done here
  
• Please use the account only to initiate a thread/start a new entry. From then on, you can just reply on the site using the guest feature or using an account of your own
• Add your contact info to the contact list in the Gmail account (dwfom.grads09@gmail.com)

Having said all this, let the discourse begin! Start big ("Who cares about classical music anyway?") or small (thank yous and special mentions - even reminiscing is fair game).

Expect an entry from me soon.

- Dave