The lecture will take place in TANNA SCHULICH HALL, followed by a catered reception in the lobby of the Elizabeth Wirth Music Building. This event is free and open to the general public.
Registration
No registration is required for this event.
**CIRMMT Students wishing to have their attendance tracked for awards eligibility, please make sure to scan the QR code available at the entrance of Tanna Schulich Hall.
Abstract
Compared to other academic fields, discourse around music uses 29% more metaphors (Pérez-Sobrino and Julich, 2014), and that metaphorical language shapes our musical discourse. But metaphors are not limited to language. They are also communicated, affirmed, and perpetuated within the material realm. Through analyses of pedagogical events such as lessons and masterclasses, I track the complex lives of metaphors as they are expressed within and through the timbral material realm. This material realm ranges from concert hall acoustics and musician placements on stage to the shaping of tongues, throats, and fingers, and other corporeal practices fine-tuned by generations of musicians. My presentation argues, and exemplifies, that examining metaphorical practices beyond the discursive is crucial to expanding our understanding of the ways we perceive and understand not only music, but also one another and the world.
Biography
Nina Sun Eidsheim is an artist, vocalist, and writer who works in and through voice, race, words/concepts, listening, and materiality. Some of this work is done through the UCLA Practice-based Experimental Epistemology Research (PEER) Lab, an experimental research Lab Nina founded and directs, dedicated to decolonializing data, methodology, and analysis, in and through multisensory creative practices. The author of Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice and The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music; and co-editor of Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies; Co-editor of the Refiguring American Music, she co-edits the Refiguring American Music book series for Duke University Press. Eidsheim is Professor of Musicology and CSWAC Chair of CSW|Streisand Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.