Category: Music and Disability

The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) is an internationally recognized research communication competition. Participants have three minutes to deliver a compelling presentation on their thesis research for a general audience using a single, static slide. On March 21, 2023, I was among the participants of the Toronto final of the French version of 3MT, Ma Thèse en 180 secondes (MT180), at Massey College. In French, of course.

Comprehensive exams are the last steps in a PhD student’s journey before being allowed to write a doctoral dissertation. I did my written comprehensive exam (a mini dissertation on a chosen topic agreed with the supervisory committee) in November about the impact of deafness on Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonata compositions. My oral comprehensive exam was on March 17, presenting a series of adaptive instruments and voice workshops I have organized in a music school, in relation to my research about professional musicians with disabilities. Though the written comprehensive exam is discussed privately between the supervisory committee and the student, the oral comprehensive exam is open to the public. It contains 1) a presentation part done by the student, 2) several rounds of questions from the committee, and 3) a decision of approval of the exam.

The 2023 Experiential Education (EE) Symposium showcases experiential education at York University and celebrates the achievements of students and faculty who have participated in EE. I was invited to talk about my research on March 8, 2023. Since I am in the middle of the topic of accessibility workshops in music schools, I presented a short video (5 min) about my adaptive voice workshop at Community Music Schools of Toronto during the symposium, along with a poster giving more details about this experience.

As a guest lecturer to Dr. Judith Cohen’s class “The Musical Experience” for non-music major and minor undergraduate students at York University on February 16, 2023, I worked with the class to create an additional chapter called “Music and Disability” for their textbook. They work with the following book: Music: A Social Experience (3rd edition). Maybe we should suggest this additional chapter to Routledge?

Lecture at York University in Rob Bowman’s first-year PhD students class, on February 2nd, 2023. A two-hours lecture about several aspects of my research about disability and music.

It was a privilege to meet my colleague Rena Roussin’s students in her “Music and Disability” course on January 24, 2023, at University of Toronto (U of T). I gave a lecture about strategies performers with disabilities apply to their music-making, along with obstacles they had to face while studying music.

Community Music Schools of Toronto, the music school where I teach voice, regularly produces videos of interviews intended to increase musical and societal knowledge. The series called CMST Talks features guests discussing specific topics. I took part in the “Accessibility in Music” talk, recorded on November 24, 2022, hosted by Thompson Egbo-Egbo and produced by Jasper Gahunia. Two other guests, in relation to my overall research about disability and music in the professional music industry, have been interviewed for the occasion: Kris Haplin, MiMu gloves player, and Precious Perez, singer and VP of RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities).

New Orleans hosted the joint American Musicology Society, Society of Ethnomusicology, and Society of Music Theory conference, from November 9 to November 13, 2022. I presented a paper entitled “Performing with a different body: re-imagining music-making” on November 11. There were some good opportunities to connect with my colleagues working hard to build a better Disability Studies field with more music talks. The conference was video recorded.

PODIUM is a Canadian festival and conference about choral singing co-presented by Choral Canada and Choirs Ontario. The event is bilingual (French and English) and occurs every two years in a different city in Canada. This year, I was involved in two aspects of the event: an accessibility assessment, and a presentation about accessibility in choirs.

This presentation is based on the one given at York University, Toronto, Canada, on January 14th, 2022. It is in English and contains embedded subtitles. How does someone deaf hear music? Is there another approach to sound when the ears are not working? In this paper, based on the assumption that deafness is incompatible with sound, thus with music, I explore the interconnections between hearing impairments and music-making, from the nineteenth century to today.