A child of the late twentieth century (b.
1963), I dedicated a large part of my life preparing to become a
musician and teacher in the Western art music tradition. I took piano
lessons from age seven and played French horn in my school band. I
studied formally at the Peabody Conservatory (DMA, composition, 1991),
Ithaca College (MM, composition and conducting, 1987), the University of
Missouri - Kansas City (doctoral work in conducting, 1987-88) and
William Jewell College (BS with honors in music, with additional studies
in theology and integrative liberal arts, 1985). I taught music, theater
and English in a small inner-city Catholic girls high school for three
years before being appointed as a professor in the Greatbatch School of
Music, Houghton College (NY) in 1993 (where, in addition to teaching
music theory and composition, I was orchestra conductor from 1995-2005).
Along the way I picked up some honors, too - a representative sampling
includes: first prize in the 2002 National Association of Teachers of
Singing Art Song Composition competition, appearances as composer and
conductor with the Buffalo and Rochester (NY) Philharmonic orchestras,
and hearing my music performed at the Kennedy Center and at Oxford
University (UK), where I also spoke in the Holywell Music Room. In 1994
I founded the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers (see www.cfamc.org),
and in 2001 I wrote a little book about Christian theology and Western
art music - The
Music of Jesus: From Composition to Koinonia, available at
Amazon.com.
However, my view of music and education
in the twenty-first century changed forever in 2004. While attending a
conference at Baylor University, at which I presented a paper on
Christian theology and contemporary Western art music, I heard Joel
Carpenter (then Provost at Calvin College in Michigan) give a most
remarkable talk about the twentieth-century explosion of global
Christianity (that is, largely outside of "the West") and its
implications for the future. I spent two years contemplating
globalization from various perspectives, and came to the firm conviction
that the future of music and culture was not what I had been trained to
believe it would (or even should) be.
At Houghton College, I continue teach
undergraduate and graduate music composition and theory, as well as
music in cultural studies, and my ongoing realizations about where we
are and where we are headed have profoundly affected everything I do
professionally, and, increasingly, personally as well. As one who is a
follower of Jesus Christ, my thoughts and feelings about this go beyond
the realm of conviction into the realm of what might be referred to as a
"calling." In short, I believe we need to significantly
rethink how we educate musicians (and, really, all students) to thrive
going forward. We need to help students become highly flexible, deeply
cosmopolitan and strongly oriented toward thinking about culture as
synthesis.
To help me gain further understanding
about the musical implications of this calling, I took another graduate
degree, this time in world music studies (MA, University of Sheffield,
UK, 2008). I started studying the shakuhachi, an ancient Japanese
bamboo flute. And I commenced a huge project that will likely consume
the rest of my professional career: developing and propagating new
musical theories and methods that assist students in the analysis,
creation and performance of diverse musics in a world tuned to global
synthesis. I am also leading the development of a new interdisciplinary
MA degree program in Global Music and Culture at Houghton College, which
we hope to launch in the spring/summer of 2010 (see www.houghtonglobalmusic.info
for information).
As a composer, most of my recent work has
been for short films, and in all of my musical output I try to reflect
the global musical awareness I preach to my students
And last, but not least, I want you to
know that I am married to an extraordinary woman, Kelley Hijleh, who, in
addition to being an outstanding singer and voice teacher, is a
spiritual mentor to many (including me) and a superb mother to our two
amazing kids, Hannah and Noah. Those three people alone are proof of how
good God really is.
