Deadline for RCM Exams

A reminder to everyone that the deadline for registering for Spring exams for this June 2013 is March 5, 2013.  The Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto)  has a brand new site and registration system that all students and teachers will have to register for regardless as to whether they have registered for previous sites or not.  Also it is important to note that rcmexaminations.org is no longer to be used, but the old site is still up their in the search engines and as a teacher you can log into it still, but that is not the site to use. Neither is rcmexaminations.ca which some enterprising person has bought to try to capture business from the RCM.  You should use examinations.rcmusic.ca if you wish to find the Royal Conservatory of Music.

Why musical genius comes easier to early starters

Good news for pushy parents. If you want your child to excel musically, you now have better justification for starting their lessons early. New evidence comes from brain scans of 36 highly skilled musicians, split equally between those who started lessons before and after the age of 7, but who had done a similar amount of training and practice.

MRI scans revealed that the white matterin the corpus callosum – the brain region that links the two hemispheres – had moreextensive wiring and connectivity in the early starters. The wiring of the late starters was not much different from that of non-musician control participants. This makes sense as the corpus callosum aids speed and synchronisation in tasks involving both hands, such as playing musical instruments.

"I think we've provided real evidence for something that musicians and teachers have suspected for a long time, that early training can produce long-lasting effects on performance and the brain," says Christopher Steele of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, a member of the team, which is led by Virginia Penhune of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Sweet spot

Steele says that younger-trained musicians may have an advantage because their training coincides with a key period of brain development . At age 7 or 8, the corpus callosum is more receptive than ever to the alterations in connectivity necessary to meet the demands of learning an instrument.

However, he stresses that these connectivity adaptations are no guarantee of musical genius. "What we're showing is that early starters have some specific skills and accompanying differences in the brain, but these things don't necessarily make them better musicians," he says. "Musical performance is about skill, but it is also about communication, enthusiasm, style and many other things we don't measure. So while starting early may help you express your genius, it won't make you a genius," he says.

Nor should older aspiring musicians despair. "They should absolutely not give up. It is never too late to learn a skill," says Steele.

Why musical genius comes easier to early starters - life - 15 January 2013 - New Scientist

Your Brain on Improv

Happy New Year!!

 

Musician and researcher Charles Limb wondered how the brain works during musical improvisation -- so he put jazz musicians and rappers in an fMRI to find out. What he and his team found has deep implications for our understanding of creativity of all kinds.

Arts Activities and Charitable Registration

After more than two years of study and consultation, the Canada Revenue Agency has just released an important paper on “Arts Activities and Charitable Registration Guidance”. While the paper may, on the surface of things, seem to apply only to those arts organizations who are seeking charitable status, this is not the case: it is important reading for organizations that wish to ensure that they are well-positioned to maintain their charitable status.  If your organization values its charitable status, it is essential that this review be coordinated with the CRA’s latest thinking.

Thanks to Orchestra Canada for sharing this.

The New Economic Reality for Classical Musicians

There is much strife these days in the classical orchestral world between professional orchestra management and the musicians, especially in the country of our neighbours to the south, the United States. Many of the same conditions and market forces are just as prevalent on this side of the 49th parallel.

In a commentary discussing the appalling situation with the Minnesota and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras where orchestra management is on the verge of locking out its musicians in a contract dispute Eric Nilsson points out some basic observation that I think can resonate through the arts community.  You can read the article I am quoting from here.  The article is well worth a read.  Here are a couple of points from the article, and some points for further discussion.

The first reality is this: However much it takes to become a top-flight classical musician, the performer can expect to earn only what the market is able and willing to pay.

What's the "market"? It's people with money, be it $10 or $10 million, who would buy concert tickets or make donations to current operations and, one would hope, to an endowment for the long haul.

Today, far more "people with money" are inspired to give to charities meeting human needs than are willing to pay top-flight classical music performers year after year. In other words, the problem here is not parsimony. The problem is that unless and until society at large assigns higher value to the extraordinary work of classical music performers, musicians cannot expect to be paid what they deserve.

He goes on further...

The first reality points to a second: to increase significantly society's value perception of live, world-class classical music, greater exposure and appreciation (in that order) would need to occur in our schools, starting at kindergarten and continuing through college. The exposure would have to be via the core curriculum, not simply by casual, extracurricular band, choral, orchestra and individual instruction.

People surrounded by classical music can vouch for its intrinsic value and thus, are willing to pay. However, to persuade people without intense exposure to become huge fans and significant financial supporters of orchestras is a tall order. And the payback I'm talking about would be a long process — 20 years if we were to institute today a "core curriculum," K-through-college approach. We would then have to wait 20 years longer before the first crop of people with such exposure would reach an age when they would be capable of making major contributions to the Minnesota Orchestra and the SPCO. (I know what I'm talking about here: In my own case, even after intense exposure to classical music all my life, I didn't start giving substantially until I was well past 40.)

Is Music the engine behind language acquisition?

Contrary to the prevailing theories that music and language are  cognitively separate or that music is a byproduct of language, theorists at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) advocate that music underlies the ability to acquire language.

“Spoken language is a special type of music,” said Anthony Brandt, co-author of a theory paper published online this month in the journal Frontiers in Cognitive Auditory Neuroscience. “Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence, and music is often treated as being dependent on or derived from language. But from a developmental perspective, we argue that music comes first and language arises from music.”

Brandt, associate professor of composition and theory at the Shepherd School, co-authored the paper with Shepherd School graduate student Molly Gebrian and L. Robert Slevc, UMCP assistant professor of psychology and director of the Language and Music Cognition Lab.

“Infants listen first to sounds of language and only later to its meaning,” Brandt said. He noted that newborns’ extensive abilities in different aspects of speech perception depend on the discrimination of the sounds of language – “the most musical aspects of speech.”

The paper cites various studies that show what the newborn brain is capable of, such as the ability to distinguish the phonemes, or basic distinctive units of speech sound, and such attributes as pitch, rhythm and timbre.

5 Ways to Make LinkedIn Board Connect Work for Your Nonprofit

LinkedIn Board Connect for nonprofits from LinkedIn for Good

With nearly two million nonprofit board seats open, good board members are hard to find. Most nonprofits know that looking for board members can be time-consuming and frustrating. I’ve been there, on the hunt for people who have the expertise and passion to make a positive contribution to the nonprofit I care about.

Read the article here