I’m a musician, and a pillar of my teaching practice is “entrepreneurship.” Usually, this boils down to my teaching younger musicians how to build careers after music school. But in the year 2019, the year of the climate emergency, I found it frustrating to reconcile the question of life after school with the future of life on our planet. I proposed this course because I wanted to leverage everything I have at my disposal—as a musician, as a historian of science, an improviser, a citizen, an ethnographer, a writer—in the service of life on this planet. This story of why I want to teach this class, then, is tied to my “climate journey,” the story of how I became awakened to the climate emergency, and how I make meaning out of my life in this time of crisis.
There is a lot here to think about, and come back to. Thank you for your amazing generosity in sharing all of these ideas, reflections and resources outside of your classroom. One thing that you said stopped me cold - "It was oil that funded my music lessons and my teachers' salaries." I have always referred to the Heritage Fund as having subsidized my studies at the Academy Program at MRC (and also given me a $1500 bursary to start university)... but you are absolutely right. At the bottom of that was oil. Add this to the list of things which I would rather had not led me to who and where I am today, but which just are!
Dr. Kalmanovitch--thank you for sharing these lectures. I look forward to reading more of your words and those of the essayists whose works you have assigned. These questions, about the role of music, and of our role as musicians, in these times of ever-worsening climate change, are ones I have been grappling with for a while.
The assignment--the start-of-class survey--seems not to be available to the public (Google Forms says the survey is only available to people in the user's organization, so maybe it is only shared with New School email addresses). Could you open up the link? Thank you.
Thank you so much. This is wonderful. Truly a gift! I am looking forward to following this.
There is a lot here to think about, and come back to. Thank you for your amazing generosity in sharing all of these ideas, reflections and resources outside of your classroom. One thing that you said stopped me cold - "It was oil that funded my music lessons and my teachers' salaries." I have always referred to the Heritage Fund as having subsidized my studies at the Academy Program at MRC (and also given me a $1500 bursary to start university)... but you are absolutely right. At the bottom of that was oil. Add this to the list of things which I would rather had not led me to who and where I am today, but which just are!
Dr. Kalmanovitch--thank you for sharing these lectures. I look forward to reading more of your words and those of the essayists whose works you have assigned. These questions, about the role of music, and of our role as musicians, in these times of ever-worsening climate change, are ones I have been grappling with for a while.
The assignment--the start-of-class survey--seems not to be available to the public (Google Forms says the survey is only available to people in the user's organization, so maybe it is only shared with New School email addresses). Could you open up the link? Thank you.