monthlyNews_2015

Conferences, Symposiums, Workshops     view all upcoming

  • Virtuosity – An interdisciplinary symposium, 3–6 March 2016, The Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest.    LINK  


AIRS News  

  • Rachel Heydon (University of Western Ontario) is giving a talk on her work that focuses on engaging older adults in arts activities (including singing) through use of iPads, October 1st at Museum London, at an event called ArtSAGE  (about creative aging). 

  • Esther Mang (Hong Kong Baptist University) has organized an International Symposium October 3rd in Kowloon “When music meets cognitive science” with Graham Welch, University College London, a keynote speaker on the topic “Singing and hearing: ‘ability’ and “disability’.  Dr. Mang will also present on “Coalescing music and cognitive science: issues of cross-disciplinary challenges”

  • The following papers from AIRS researchers will be presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Acoustical Association that will take place in Halifax October 7th – 9th.  Both Frank Russo and Annabel Cohen are chairing sessions.  Frank Russo is President of the Association. 

    • Frank Russo & Stephen Livingstone:  The Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song (Ryerson University, Toronto)

    • Leslie Phillmore, and Jordan Fisk, Dalhousie University, Simone Falk, Ludwig Maximillians University, Germany, Christine Tsang, Huron College of Western University.  Do finches speak Russian? Songbirds can discriminate infant-directed song and speech.

    • Wladyslaw Cichocki:  The timing of accented phrases in read and spontaneous speech: Data from Acadian French (University of New Brunswick)

    • Derek Hughes, Bing-Yi Pan, Annabel Cohen, (University of Prince Edward Island).  Performance on two tasks of the AIRS Test Battery of Singing Skills in persons with cochlear implants. (Hughes is current a graduate student at Dalhousie University)

Singer-Songwriter Survey

Are you a passionate singer-songwriter who feels called to this career? This 15-minute anonymous online survey will pose open and closed questions about your early influences, musical memories, education, geographic location and your music career to date. It is ethically approved and upon completion you will have the option to be entered into a draw for a $50 gift card to Long & McQuade. One gift card will be drawn for every 25 participants entered.    LINK

 

AIRS Recent Publications

  • A special issue of Musicae Scientiae, September, 2015 19 (3) features the AIRS Test Battery of Singing Skills.  Guest edited by Helga Gudmundsdottir and Annabel J. Cohen, the issue contains studies representing participants from Brazil, Canada, China, Estonia, and the USA.  Across the various studies the issue reports on different age groups (from pre-school to senior years) and on six of the musical components of the Test Battery.  For the table of contents and abstracts, click here

  • June Countryman has published the following article which reports on the exploration of how children's natural singing in play is on a speech-singing continuum.

    Start-up games on school playgrounds: instances of ceremonial rituals, Countryman, J. (2015), *Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education; Fall, 2014, 202,*7-27.

This study emerged from naturalistic observations of children's self-initiated musical play on the playgrounds of 14 Canadian schools, part of a three-year project anchored by the broad research question: What is the nature of children's spontaneous musical expressions during selfdirected play? Seven of the dozens of play start-up procedures documented during these observations are analyzed, using ritual theories from a variety of scholarly orientations to establish that these start-up games are genuine ritual acts. While some theorists identify ritual in every aspect of quotidian life, the author proposes that children's start-up procedures are ceremonial rituals, examples of what Dissanayake termed as artifying. They are characterized by an extended and reverent focus on the performance of a series of formalized rhythmic, kinesthetic actions, sustained by a shared belief that the process is meaningful. Some of the possible benefits that these startup rituals provide are considered, recognizing that, as with all play scenarios, there are issues of inclusion and exclusion. The author suggests that respectful examinations of children's musical play culture contribute to the project of revisioning music education practice by offering insights into the richness and sophistication of children's musicking proclivities and abilities. The author proposes specific pedagogical applications.  LINK 

  • AIRS co-investigator Lauren Stewart has co-authored an article in a Frontiers special issue dedicated to research at the intersection of music neuroscience and music therapy. The article presents a rationale for using family-centred music therapy (singing; vocalizing) with medically fragile newborns.

    Constructing optimal experience for the hospitalized newborn through neuro-based music therapy, Helen Shoemark, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Australia, Deanna Hanson-Abromeit, University of Kansa, Lauren Stewart, Goldsmiths, University of London, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience | doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00487

    Music-based intervention for hospitalized newborn infants has traditionally been based in a biomedical model, with physiological stability as the prime objective. More recent applications are grounded in other theories, including attachment, trauma and neurological models in which infant, parent and the dyadic interaction may be viewed as a dynamic system bound by the common context of the NICU. The immature state of the preterm infant’s neurological system and particularly auditory system means that no assumptions can be made about auditory processing and stimulation should proceed with caution. The infant’s experience of an unpredictable auditory environment is further compromised by a potential lack of meaningful auditory stimulation. Parents often feel disconnected from their own capacities to nurture their infant. The implications for the infant’s neurobehavioral and psychological well-being are life-long. This perspectives paper will outline the likely neurological considerations for auditory processing in the premature infant as well as establishing a premise for music-based interventions. A hypothetical clinical case will illustrate the application of music by a music therapist with an infant and family in NICU.  LINK

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