Monthly Archives: August 2020

Interview with James Perkins

Image may contain: James Perkins, glasses, night and close-up

This interview took place online on 13 August 2020 between City’s Head of the Department of Music, Dr Ian Pace, and BMus graduate James Perkins.

Ian Pace: I want to welcome James Perkins. James graduated from the BMus course at City in 2012, and went on to work for the Students’ Union at City for 2 years. Since 2015, he has been working in Arts Higher Education, and is Head of Quality Assurance and Enhancement at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. He has also recently started a PhD in Higher Education at the University of Lancaster.

James, it is great to see you again, since you were coming to the end of your undergraduate study when I had just started at City! What are any of your abiding memories of your time as an undergraduate on the BMus?

James Perkins: Thanks Ian, it’s always great to think back on my time at City! I think my lasting memories are performing as a small vocal ensemble one of Tarik O’Regan’s own pieces…to Tarik O’Regan (!), doing gigs with the City Big Band and also the great sense of community everyone in the department had for each other

IP: What were some of the areas in which you specialised during the course of your undergraduate degree?

JP: I arrived at City quite unsure how I wanted to specialise, but I was able to try out a lot of different areas and in my second year I really got in to composition. This was where I focused my third year in particular and I also wrote my dissertation about video game music composition. I also combined this with studying European music from the 19th century on; I really enjoyed learning about how composers subverted dictatorships during WW2 and in Cold War Russia, as well as the development of opera during this time.

IP: What would you say are some of the wider skills developed during your undergraduate degree which have proved useful in your subsequent activities?

JP: What was great about the degree was that I was able to learn a whole load of skills (collaboration, working to deadlines, learning new technologies and developing clear arguments for example) which prepared me to go into any number of careers when I finished. I was also a programme representative during my studies, and I benefited from this kind of extra-curricular activity in developing my ability to communicate, synthesise feedback and make proposals and time management.

IP: You went on to work for the City Students’ Union after finishing your degree. How did this activity change your perspective upon time as a student?

JP:  I was representing the views of students across the university in that role to a lot of different academic groups within City, and I realised how special it was to be part of a group of students in a department that was so tight-knit, that was incredibly supportive and also where Music felt like it was radical, exciting and could be used to make a difference when we graduated.

IP:  And how about in terms of your work as a Head of Quality Assurance and Enhancement? A lot of students may not know about the nature of this type of activity, and how vital a part it plays in the running of university degrees.

JP: When I was writing music, I found it really helpful to develop frameworks and rules that I could use, bend and play around with to help spark my creativity. When I started working in arts higher education, I was able to apply the same kind of processes to helping academic teams ensure that they quality of their degrees is the highest it can be. It’s often not a part of universities people know a lot about, but there’s lots of people like doing what I do every institution! To be able to do that in the arts as well is really rewarding, it feels like I’ve been able to combine a lot of different areas of interest.

IP: What would you say to anyone thinking about studying music at higher education level?

JP: I would absolutely encourage them to do it – I haven’t regretted it for one second! In some ways it is one of the most flexible degrees, getting you to look at music through multiple lenses (as historian, sociologist, anthropologist, artist, physicist) and you develop so much over your three years. Doing that at a university in the heart of London is just great.

IP: There are some who imagine that a music degree is of purely ‘vocational’ import, i.e. it only prepares you specifically for a musical career. I imagine you would have quite a different view?

JP: I do! People in my class went off to do so many different things, from teaching to performing, fitness instruction, further studies and academic roles in and outside of music. I think what a degree gives you is so much more than just the opportunity to learn new things and if you reflect on how you develop as a person during your time at City you just open so many doors for yourself.

IP: James, thanks so much for doing this interview today. Do you have any links relating to your work or anything else which you would like to share?

JP: If you’re interested in what I’m up to you can follow me on Twitter @JPHEd, and if you have any questions I’m always happy to answer!

Interview with Genevieve Arkle

This interview took place online on 13 August 2020 between City’s Head of the Department of Music, Dr Ian Pace, and BMus graduate Genevieve Arkle.

Ian Pace: I want to welcome Genevieve Arkle. Genevieve studied at City from 2011-14 on the BMus course, before going on to do a Master’s degree at King’s College, and is currently pursuing a PhD on Wagner and Mahler at Surrey University, whilst having returned in 2019-20 to teach on my Ninteenth-Century Opera module. In 2020-21, she will be teaching in the modules Music, Fascism, Communism, and Music in Culture 2.

She is Deputy Director of the Institute of Austrian and German Music Research (IAGMR). Genevieve is also a Board Member of the EDI in Music Studies Network and was recently appointed as the Leader of the PGR / ECR Network for the Gustav Mahler Research Centre founded at the University of Innsbruck

Genevieve, welcome! What are some of your most abiding memories of City from when you were an undergraduate?

Genevieve Arkle: Hi Ian! Thank you for featuring me for an interview. I think the thing I feel I enjoyed the most at City was the versatility of the education that I received. When I first started, I was convinced I was going to have a career as a performer, and City gave me the opportunity to dive head first into my performance studies. However, at the same time I took a module on ‘African American Music Studies: Gospel and Blues’ that allowed me to explore the representation of race in music, and similarly, after taking the ‘Wagner, Mahler, Schoenberg’ module I started to get a feel for the relationship between music and philosophy and musical aesthetics in general. (This module actually sparked the idea for my current PhD thesis, so I’ve got a lot of praise for that one!). So over the years I was able to look beyond performance and actually discover so many things that I was interested in that I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to explore otherwise. As for the most _lasting_ memory? It has to be the Christmas Cabarets with the Staff ‘Orchestra’ attempting Christmas Carols on instruments they couldn’t play. I loved that City offered so much community and mingling across year groups and also between staff and students.

IP: How do you feel your perspective on music changed after your three years at City?

GA: I think my perspective certainly developed over time, as I realised that (unlike A Level music courses, and other comparable exams) it was not expected of me just to repeat information that I had been taught in the lecture. I was given the creative freedom to write on things that inspired me and was encouraged to give my own perspective and substantiate that into a fully-fledged academic essay that could (maybe, one day!) influence the way in which we look at a work. I think the skills that I learned from this, independent thought, critical thinking, strong academic writing, etc. all really helped me to carve a path for myself in the industry after leaving City.

IP: How would you relate, in your own experience, studying about music to learning it as a performer?

GA: I think these two things are, in many ways, inseparable entities. My passion for Gustav Mahler’s music came primarily from performing it, after being invited to sing in the chorus for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, and also doing a few choral arrangements of some Rückert-Lieder. The performances moved me so much that I wanted to understand what it was about that music that made me love it so much. I also think its essential that performers learn where their music comes from so they can perform it with more historical awareness and understanding. So much of music is written in response to something that was happening in the wider context of their society (or politics, or personal relationships, (the gossipy composer stories are endless!)) and all of that is essential to understand in order to tell the ‘story’ of the piece well when you play it.

IP: You have continued to pursue an academic career, and today you stand on the ‘other side’ from where you were as a student – now teaching some of the types of things you were then learning! How does this sort of perspective affect how you look back on your time as an undergraduate?

GA: Ha, well it was certainly a bit unnerving at first! After spending three years at City as a student listening to many distinguished lecturers teach me, being the person _behind_ the podium for the first time was a bit of a shock! But it has been an incredibly valuable experience that enables me to reflect and work out how I can do better and help my students to achieve their best. Standing on the other side now, I wish my undergraduate self had sometimes spoken up more in lectures and shared my views (nothing kills a lecture like a tumbleweed moment after the lecturer asks a question, folks!). I think I used to worry about getting the answer ‘wrong’ to something, and what I’m realising now is that it’s all about facilitating discussion and engagement and that we WANT to hear your thoughts and perspectives even if they seem wrong or silly. Because that’s how you learn, and that’s what sparks new conversations and ideas.

IP: From your experiences of teaching at City and elsewhere, have you found that many think of study in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ views on things? If so, why might that be?

GA:  I think at earlier stages of learning (in school / college) we are all taught in a way that encourages repetition of ideas rather than creative thinking. And from teaching first year undergraduates I have found that it’s a real learning curve for them when they realise that there are no wrong answers and that we need to embrace subjectivity. Also, I think of utmost importance is realising that you don’t have to like a piece of music to have a valuable view. If you hate something, that’s all the better for discussion, because it’s great to think about why you have such a response to it. Although not with university students, I had a fantastic encounter with a young girl in one of my secondary school music workshops who told me that she hated classical music and refused to participate. The task I set for them was to listen to the piece and jot down what it made them think of and what associations the piece might have (a very early introduction to Topic Theory). When I played the third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony (a slow, macabre funeral procession to the tune of ‘Frère Jacques’) she refused to participate, claiming “I don’t get it. This is a waste of time. It’s awful and depressing and sounds like someone has died.” I told her that she was spot on, it’s a funeral march, and you could see the penny drop for her where this idea that she could have an opinion on something, that she could _hate_ something, and still get the answer ‘correct’ was really liberating for her. So I think we need to help students see that learning isn’t black and white, and that their thoughts and views are valuable.

IP: You have also done a lot of work to do with Equality, Diversity, Inclusion in Music Education. Could you tell us a bit more about this, and some of the most important challenges in these respects, in your view?

GA: Yes, so I’m of black-mixed heritage, and I’ve always found music studies (particularly within academia) to be a very white dominated field. I decided to speak out on this for the first time earlier this year at a conference where I discussed Black and Black Mixed representation in Music Higher Education. Through my research, I learned that only 0.7% of individuals (across all subjects and departments in the UK) in senior academic are black, in contrast to 93% white. I was just at a loss for words and decided I wanted to be a part of the change and help make music higher education a more inclusive and welcoming space. So I was invited to join the EDI in Music Studies Network and I currently run all their social media platforms which aim to create online safe spaces for people to share and discuss issues concerning diversity and representation in Music. But, and perhaps more importantly, on a personal level I try to do my best to create safe spaces in my lecture rooms and to have those uncomfortable conversations with my colleagues so that the upcoming generation of students (I hope) will not feel as marginalised or unwelcome in departments. We need mentorship schemes, we need to foster diverse recruitment and get more People of Colour (PoC) in staff positions at Universities, we need community and safe spaces for PoC within their department and we need allies who are willing to use their privilege to fight for change from the inside. I am doing my best to combat this but it needs to be a collective effort, and I hope that as we all move forwards we’ll be able to create some positive and lasting change in this area. In the mean time, if any students want to chat about EDI or racial representation in Music, my (currently virtual) door is always open to listen, learn, and help in any way I can.

IP: Do you think the EDI issues relate to earlier education (at primary and secondary level) as well as at university? There are clear imbalances in those who apply for music degree courses (also significant differences in terms of gender relating to different types of courses)?

GA: Yes absolutely – this is a problem that starts far earlier on in life and I think higher education is just a symptom of this rather than the cause. Having said that, I often feel that there is a problem with visibility and PoC feeling like a department or course might not be ‘for them’ because the department has no PoC on staff or on their current student body. The same goes for gender, that there is this idea that working in tech, for example, is ‘not for women.’ We need to see more women in these fields (power to Laura Selby!)  and throw these outdated gender roles in the bin!

IP: What might be any thoughts or recommendations you would want to share with those thinking of studying music as part of higher education?

GA:  Do it!!! People often think that if you study music you can only go into music, and it’s so wrong. So much of what you learn on these courses can be applicable to wider career opportunities and and you develop so many transferable skills. There is so much more to studying Music that just dead composers and Bach chorales, and if you have a passion for any kind of music, just follow it and see where it takes you. If you told 18 year old me that at 27 I’d be completing a PhD in 19th-century Austro-German music and lecturing at a University I would have laughed _hard_. But I feel like passion led me here without me even realising it, as I just followed what interested me and started carving a little space for myself in this world. So my advice is just to go for it and follow your passion for music, whatever it may be!, and give it your all.

… also, please do the reading for your lectures. 😉

IP: Genevieve, thank you very much for doing this interview. Do you have any links relating to your work which you would like to share?

GA: My absolute pleasure! Thank you so much for asking me to be involved. Yes, so please feel free to give me a follow on twitter as I usually post my latest musicology ramblings and any interesting articles (mostly memes) on there: @genevievearkle

You can also check out the @EDIMusicStudies twitter for our equality, diversity and inclusion work, and here’s the website with some more info:
https://www.edimusicstudies.com/

For those interested in Austrian and German Classical Music, you can check out our organisation, the IAGMR (Institute of Austrian and German Music Research) @iagmr_surrey and see our blog etc on our website:
https://iagmrsurrey.wordpress.com/

 

Interview with Laura Selby

Image may contain: 1 person, on stage and playing a musical instrument

This interview took place online on 13 August 2020 between City’s Head of the Department of Music, Dr Ian Pace, and BMus graduate Laura Selby.

Ian Pace: I want to introduce you to Laura Selby, who graduated from the BMus course in 2015, and now works as a Production Manager and Music and Sound Editor for the leading composer-led studio organisation Brains & Hunch. Here is Laura’s website – https://laurakrselby.com/ and here is that for Brains & Hunch – https://www.brainsandhunch.com/ . 

Laura, you’ve gone onto a wonderful career since being at City. What are your most abiding memories of your time with us?

Laura Selby: There are so many to choose from but particular memories would be the Christmas Cabarets, a time we had to celebrate our department as a whole and felt like one big family enjoying our passion of all things musical together, with wine. Of course.
Another was being the leader of the orchestra in my final year, a tricky year for me but the department was so supportive, I was able to still achieve my absolute best despite circumstances.

IP: That’s fantastic – which pieces were played by the orchestra when you were leader?

LS: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, an absolute favourite especially the 2nd movement. It was fantastic having the opportunity to play such a beautiful piece at the LSO St Lukes.

IP: What do you remember in particular in terms of the modules you took during your study?

LS: Particular modules that stood out for me were performance, audio art and techno culture and composing for moving image. I was able to move my instrumental performance to a standard I had not expected to obtain coupled with learning how to apply my playing and understanding to the industry of music production and sound art. Such a broad array of skills to explore.

IP: Were such things as audio art, techno culture and composing for the moving image previous interests, or things you first started to explore at City?

LS: They were as I have always enjoyed experimenting with creating recordings from sounds around me. The modules helped me focus that in useful applications as well as inspiring me further for more abstract creations.

IP: How do think your perspective on music, and things musical, changed from when you started at City until when you left?

LS: Massively and is still constantly evolving. I think it helps open up new ideas and genres/ concepts that previously were just not on the radar of possibility. By the time I left I think my experience left me with the freedom to go make my own way with the skill set to apply in any direction I decided to go.

IP:  Could you elaborate a little on some of those ideas and genres/concepts?

LS: David Dunn was a composer who really pivoted my interest in looking at environments in a new light, how deeply he thought about concepts regarding the world around him and the way he elevated these through compositions interacting with different settings. Primarily using music as an intermediary between humans and their environment.

IP: What are some of the skills you developed during your time at City which you have gone on to use in your professional life?

LS: Sound recording, mixing and editing in both Logic and ProTools are used most days in my creative work for Brains and Hunch and freelance projects. Other skills from managing the orchestra sections when I was leader are always applicable when liaising with clients and musicians who come into the studio for sessions. Critical thinking and listening for producer roles when feeding back on music/ sound work or communicating a new idea. Many!

IP: What would be your advice to anyone who is thinking of studying music at a higher education level?

LS: Have an open mind to what you can take from your time at City and take as many opportunities to utilise the brilliant advantages studying music in London brings, like the lunch time/ evening concerts which are attended by industry professionals (they’re so good!) never too soon to network. And most importantly make as much music with your fellow peers, make relationships as these are the people who you may well work with later on or get opportunities with. Use this opportunity to get creative, experiment with ideas and make mistakes 🙂
Good luck!!

IP: Laura, thank you so much for doing this interview today! Where would those reading this be best to look for samples of the types of projects on which you are working at present?

LS: Pleasure! Yes check out Brains and Hunch’s site to see all the projects that come through the studio and on my site my recent personal project More Than Concrete made for The Albany is a great example of what you can just get on and do if you have an idea!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8TLo7mYYhKg

 

Interview with Honey Rouhani

Image may contain: Honey Rouhani Barbaro

This interview took place online on 13 August 2020 between City’s Head of the Department of Music, Dr Ian Pace, and BMus graduate Honey Rouhani.

Ian Pace: I am very pleased to introduce you all to distinguished British-Iranian soprano Honey Rouhani Barbaro. Honey graduated from the BMus course at City in 2011, and since has won various prizes and pursued an important career as an opera singer, singing such roles as Despina in Cosi fan tutti, Mimi in La bohème and Tosca in the opera of that name. Her website is below.

http://www.honeyrouhani.co.uk/about/4578003998
Honey, welcome! It’s great to see you again. Could you tell me something about your time at

City, and what this has meant in terms of your subsequent career?

Honey Rouhani: Hi Ian, so wonderful to be speaking with you here. And as always a pleasure to be an alumni of City University. I was on the BMus performance degree at City and throughout the 3 years I spent there, I learnt more about music than I ever did before and after my time. As an Opera Singer I soon realised that just having the knowledge of singing and performance is not enough to have a successful career. I learnt so much about the history of music, not only Western Classical music but different ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds. In particular I loved the Ethnomusicology and Music reception.

IP: How did the study of those different musical traditions affect how you thought about music as a whole?

HR:  Coming from a different culture myself, it was so wonderful to learn so much about other cultures and their importance in what we call World Music today. The importance of connecting our world with the power of Music was the most important part of my learning.

IP: Tell me about the study of music reception for you?

HR: Music reception focused on the various events that occurred after a particular piece was premiered or performed for the first time. I was so fascinated to learn that all these events and issues like people leaving the concert hall, the social conventions etc were not just particular to one genre but could be seen in a spectrum of all musical genres. I in particular remember Bizet’s Carmen and Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

IP: Two very different examples! But both with their own sets of conventions for both musicians and listeners, in terms of listening and wider behaviour?

HR: For example, in terms of Bizet’s Carmen, the convention of going to the theatre to see something was a family event. People would bring picnics and enjoy family time whilst seeing something on stage. However this was the first time at the Opéra Comique in Paris that there was a murder scene, and people left the theatre. Many believe that this was one of the reasons that Bizet died 3 months later, as he was terribly heart broken after his premiere.

IP: Whereas if they had been at the main Opéra (which now combines the Opéra-Garnier and Opéra-Bastille) in Paris, murders on stage would have been commonplace. If only Bizet had had an inkling that his opera would go on to be one of the most successful of all time.

HR: Absolutely. now every time I perform Carmen I have that in mind.

IP: Tell me some more about your experiences of performance at City?

HR: I had a great time being a part of both the Chamber choir and the a cappella group led by the wonderful Alexander Lingas called Civitas. Both taught me so much about musicianship, tone, and controlling vibrato.

IP: The music you would have sung with Civitas would have been of a wholly different nature to what you do now as an opera singer?

HR: Totally. We mainly worked on Gregorian chant and polyphony from the Greek orthodox church.

IP: A repertoire which is likely to be quite unfamiliar to many at undergraduate level, I would think? But what attracted you in that music?

HR: I learnt so much from this group, about sight-singing, being able to sing in an ensemble without necessarily being on the melody line and learning to hold your tune whilst 15 other singers are singing different lines around you. I loved the music because it was sacred.

IP: Fantastic. What do you think are amongst the most important skills worth developing during university-level musical study?

HR: The history of Western Classical Music just changed my life. I still have all my notes as well as the big book with all the post its that I can refer to anytime I want. In my career there has been many times that I’ve wanted to understand the reasons behind a composers thinking,  to be able to interpret it in the right way. And I’ve gone back to my book and my notes and almost every time solved the issue.

IP: You could certainly have studied at either a university or a conservatoire. What made you choose a university department?

HR: I really recommend broadening ones horizons to different genres. When I first came to see City on an open day, I saw myself living the next 3 years of my life at City. I had heard so much about City university’s music department and had a couple of friends who had already studied there. I also wanted to have an academic knowledge as well as performance knowledge and I truly got the best of both worlds

IP: What would be your advice to any at age 18 nowadays who is thinking about pursuing musical study further?

HR: I think the best advice to the young students would be to really understand their love for music and why they are pursuing it as opposed to pursuing it as a hobby or simply as a means to gain a bachelor’s degree. The music business is not a joke, it’s full of hard work and frustrating moments, so you really need to love it

IP: Could you give us some links to hear you sing (it would be great to talk about some concerts, but understandably most performances are on hold for the majority of musicians during lockdown)?

HR: Sure, you can find some recordings on my website www.honeyrouhani.co.uk, as well as IGTV on Scenarialtd page. My performance diary for 2020 has a big red cross on it at the moment. However I’m lucky enough to be teaching and hopefully inspiring the next generations.

IP: Honey, thank you so much. We look forward to welcoming you back to City soon!

HR: It was absolutely my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and good luck to all starting this year.