About the conference: purpose and evolution
As stated on the home page of the site, the intent of the conference is to bring together people who do work in music that is essentially spiritual in nature.
The idea for having a conference at all, and especially one that is an “unconference”, comes from work in developing my workshop, Just Listening. The initial impetus for developing the workshop came from a desire to spread the word about my analytical method, the Sound-Energy Aggregate (SEA). I had used it for years in classes at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, and knew how people opened up to deeper study of modern music by participation in discussions of what they heard. And I had realized that the method was rather like meditation, or at least the type of meditation I do, which is Shikantaza, or Just Sitting. In listening to music, the workshop encourages people to “just listen”, commenting on the most obvious things they hear and remember, with no emphasis whatsoever on knowing about modern music. After three to five listenings, a group will essentially figure out what makes a piece work, whether they use musical terminology or not. Later comes the study that fills in the knowledge, but the critical first step is listening without judgment, as if one knew nothing: in other words, with beginner’s mind.
When the idea arose to have a conference and draw folks together who do work with music that they consider to be of the spirit, lifting of spirit, etc., it was clear immediately that extending the “not knowing” as far into the conference process as possible would be a way to have a very alive experience. So that’s what we’ll do. There will be a framework, an idea of when things will happen, but exactly which pieces fit together and how, we’ll determine as the conference commences... of course, we can’t know how that will be, given the not-knowing impulse!
Please join us!
Timeline:
As stated on the home page of the site, the intent of the conference is to bring together people who do work in music that is essentially spiritual in nature.
The idea for having a conference at all, and especially one that is an “unconference”, comes from work in developing my workshop, Just Listening. The initial impetus for developing the workshop came from a desire to spread the word about my analytical method, the Sound-Energy Aggregate (SEA). I had used it for years in classes at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, and knew how people opened up to deeper study of modern music by participation in discussions of what they heard. And I had realized that the method was rather like meditation, or at least the type of meditation I do, which is Shikantaza, or Just Sitting. In listening to music, the workshop encourages people to “just listen”, commenting on the most obvious things they hear and remember, with no emphasis whatsoever on knowing about modern music. After three to five listenings, a group will essentially figure out what makes a piece work, whether they use musical terminology or not. Later comes the study that fills in the knowledge, but the critical first step is listening without judgment, as if one knew nothing: in other words, with beginner’s mind.
When the idea arose to have a conference and draw folks together who do work with music that they consider to be of the spirit, lifting of spirit, etc., it was clear immediately that extending the “not knowing” as far into the conference process as possible would be a way to have a very alive experience. So that’s what we’ll do. There will be a framework, an idea of when things will happen, but exactly which pieces fit together and how, we’ll determine as the conference commences... of course, we can’t know how that will be, given the not-knowing impulse!
Please join us!
Timeline:
- proposals due by January 15
- notification of participation by February 15
- Registration open January 2020
- Registration closes April 2020
John Morrison
September 29, 2019