The recent Hong Kong unrest displaced some of my teaching, and in two instances I presented a talk in the absence of some of the students meant to be there, posting both online in a few places/formats so that students both local and non-local (mostly from mainland China) could watch. My own philosophy is that as long as I am sharing something, there may  be others who want to understand these topics.

Participatory Music in Education (talk given at the Association for Music in International Schools; Hong Kong, November 22, 2019). 

This talk presents a basic overview of participatory music, contrasting participatory music with more specialised, presentational music. The talk was informal, and replaced an original plan to have a mixed sing-along/discussion. The slides are more of a placeholder for ideas, but if you want to see them here they are.

Demonstration of fiddle/banjo for Pedagogies of Improvisation course

I teach a graduate course on pedagogies of improvisation in music learning, and we had a visit from Akihiro Uchida, a master old-time fiddle player based in Japan and the US, and with whom I often played while living in Japan. We had a very informal and impromptu sharing session, mostly a jam with a bit of question and answer. If you’ve seen the above discussion of participatory music, you can see a bit more in-depth example based around one style of playing.