Musical U Living Music Workshop: “Visualizing Music” and Active Listening

Hello! It’s been quite awhile. As I’m sure many of you are well aware, the live classical music industry (like all of the performing arts industry) experienced total upheaval due to the COVID-19 pandemic, initially, with the cancellation of thousands of performances across the globe. Thankfully, albeit with an abundance of necessary caution, concerts have very gradually resumed, and some of us have been able to get back to the hall to experience live music. Yet, even as restrictions from travel and gathering together prevented us from going to see live concerts, we could watch, from our homes, a plethora of performances on offer on a myriad of digital streaming platforms. In fact, I personally found the abundance of concerts I could see overwhelming! For many of us, though, this helped to fill the gap. And perhaps never before have we appreciated as much as we do now the importance and value of the arts to help us deal with and make sense of these uncertain times.

All of this, of course, had reduced the opportunities for the Visual Listening Guide to be made available to audiences at concert halls. However, I’m happy to say, interest and use of the Guides for at-home listening and pedagogical purposes remained steady during this period—and have continued to do so, with their convenient printable PDF format and the fact that the Guide can be used with any audio or video recording.

Moreover, people have become keener-than-ever to deepen their musical listening skills. That’s what Adam Liette, Director of Operations at Musical U, a thriving online musical training platform, told me in late March 2021. (I was previously interviewed by Musical U about my Visual Listening Guides in 2017.) Recently, Musical U successfully launched a new program for their members called Living Music. A series called “Active Listening” was underway and Adam asked if I could do a live virtual workshop presentation on the topic of “visualizing music”—with the Visual Listening Guides—as a practice for facilitating active listening. As this topic is a passion of mine, of course I said yes!

On April 28, I gave my presentation via Zoom, taking an engaged and enthusiastic audience through how the Visual Listening Guide is designed and then showing how it works with audio excerpts, focusing particularly on Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”. My hope and goal was that showing this process would give them a way into developing a deeper understanding and appreciation of the art and craft of the symphony, and approach listening to these works with greater confidence and enjoyment.

Here’s some of the lovely feedback the workshop received:

Thank you, Musical U, for this opportunity to share my work with your wonderful community of music learners!

Note: This live workshop was recorded and will continue to be displayed for Musical U students.