Part of keeping up with current knowledge is going to conferences. And often presenting at them – whether it’s giving a masterclass, presenting on teaching, or delivering a research paper. It’s also a great excuse to see new places and meet new people!
In July this year I’m planning to be in Akaroa, New Zealand, for the 31st Australia New Zealand Association for Research in Music Education (ANZARME). I was for many years involved with the Australian Association for Research in Music Education, and for two years served as President, but I haven’t been to a conference since the Australian and New Zealand associations combined. While I have a long-standing professional association with New Zealand, through teaching at a national summer singing school for six years, giving masterclasses and lectures at various universities and for the New Zealand Association of Teachers of Singing, I’m looking forward to getting the feel of this new, larger ANZARME and for the first time visiting Akaroa, an historic French and British harbour settlement built in an ancient volcano.
In 2008 it was the national conference of the Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing (ANATS) in Perth. It was the 20th anniversary of the foundation of ANATS, and since I was one of the founding members, and the organiser of our first conference, I just had to be there! Perth has great musical and friendship associations for me, since I did my Honours and Masters degrees there and also a lot of performing. This conference meant catching up with colleagues I hadn’t seen for years, getting time to talk with colleagues from other States, and getting lots of tips on singing for contemporary commercial music from the international keynote speaker, Jeannette LoVetri from New York.
In 2007 it was the Third Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM07) in Tallinn, the ancient capital of Estonia. I presented a paper (co-authored with linguist Dr Edward McDonald) comparing the utilisation of sound in spoken and sung voice performance. I’d missed the second interdisciplinary musicology conference in Canada, but was a presenter at the first conference in Austria. These international conferences bring together researchers from every discipline relevant to research in music. CIM especially promotes collaborations between sciences and humanities, between theory and practice, as well as interdisciplinary combinations that are new, unusual, creative, or otherwise especially promising. The Tallinn conference was of particular interest in that it focused on SINGING. There were lots of papers on singing, and lots of singing, both in the conference and in the fascinating old town. It’s a small, historic city, full of music.