VOLUME 28, NO. 2 • 2022 IN THIS ISSUE: Awards Cutting Edge Concerts Friday after Friday IAWM Conference Keyboard Instruments LORELT at 30 Members’ News Julia Perry PianissiMore Reports Reviews Sidewalk Opera Stabat Mater Time and Text Alissa Duryee with the harpsichord she built JOURNAL of theINTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR WOMEN IN MUSIC IAWM is a global network of people working to increase and enhance musical activities and opportunities and to promote all aspects of the music of women. The IAWM builds awareness of women’s contributions to musical life through publications, website, free listserv, international competitions for researchers and composers, conferences, and congresses, concerts, the entrepreneurial efforts of its members, and advocacy work. IAWM activities ensure that the progress women have made in every aspect of musical life will continue to flourish and multiply. Inquiries IAWM 2712 NE 13th Ave. Portland, OR 97212 Payments IAWM 2400 Alycia Ave Henrico, VA 23228 PAYPAL to treasurer@iawm.org www.iawm.org/civicrm/iawm-payments-page/ Copyright © 2022 by the International Alliance for Women in Music. All rights reserved. ISSN 1082-1872 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission. Any author has the right to republish his or her article in whole or in part with permis- sion from the IAWM. Please contact the editor. The Journal of the IAWM is designed and printed by Cheetah Graphics, Inc. of Sevierville, TN. Journal: Back Issues Back issues are available for members to download on the website under Journal– archives. If you wish to purchase a back issue, contact membership@iawm.org. Journal of the IAWM Staff EDITOR IN CHIEF Eve R. Meyer evemeyer45@gmail.com ASSISTANT EDITOR Christina Reitz MEMBERS’ NEWS EDITOR Anita Hanawalt anita@hanawalthaus.net REVIEW EDITOR Laura Pita laurapita830@gmail.com EDITORIAL BOARD Samantha Ege Deborah Hayes Eve R. Meyer Laura Pita Christina Reitz IAWM Board of Directors PRESIDENT Christina Rusnak VICE PRESIDENT Dana Reason TREASURER Deborah J. Saidel SECRETARY Wanda Brister SUPPORTING MEMBERS Gaby Alvarado Kerensa Briggs Teil Buck Monica Buckland Christina Butera Roma Calatayud-Stocks Michele Cheng Eline Cote Morgan Davis Carolina Hengstenberg Sarah Horick Natalia Kazaryan Migiwa Miyajima Elizabeth Blanton Momand Julia Mortyakova Nicole Murphy Deborah Nemko Sabrina Peña Young Riikka Pietilainen-Caffrey Leah Reid Christina Reitz Jane Rigler Support The IAWM Your donations enable IAWM to fulfill its mission and vision. Our awards, grants, and advocacy efforts bring greater equity and awareness of the contribu- tions of women in music. Any amount helps to fund our concerts, conferences, the Journal of the IAWM, grants, and all of our member services. To donate: www.iawm.org/support/ PAYPAL to treasurer@iawm.org Visit IAWM Online www.iawm.org www.twitter.com/iawmcommunity www.instagram.com/iawmcommunity www.facebook.com/IAWMusic YouTube: Coming in 2022!2022 IAWM CONFERENCE 1Call & (HER) Response, Music in Time of Change DANA REASON KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS 3Historical Keyboard Instruments: Building, Teaching, and Composing ALISSA DURYEE 7PianissiMore Sounds Fortissimo! GYULI KAMBAROVA VOCAL MUSIC 9Arias from Friday After Friday: Women Caught in the Syrian Civil War LEANNA KIRCHOFF 14Sidewalk Opera: Connecting Community and Music CATHERINE KELLY 16Time and Text in Relation to Music ANIA VU 18Julia Perry’s Masterpiece: Stabat Mater EVGENIYA KOZHEVNIKOVA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 • 2022 JOURNAL of the IAWM Membership Information IAWM membership includes a subscription to the Journal of the IAWM (issued four times a year) plus access to past issues on the IAWM website. Membership offers opportunities for awards in ten categories of composition, as well as music scholarship and programming, an education grant, opportunities to participate in annual concerts and IAWM conferences, and opportunities to present webinars. Membership offers increased visibility through IAWM’s social media platforms, website, and optional IAWM Listserv; eligibility to run for and hold board and officer positions within IAWM; and connections with a vibrant community made up of members from 30 countries on five continents, sharing, celebrating, and supporting women in music globally. For information on joining or renewing your membership, visit the IAWM website: www.iawm.org/contact-us/. We would like to hear from more of you, so don’t be shy—send us your reports, reviews, articles, proposals, and news for submissions to the journal. —CHRISTINA RUSNAK ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS 21Twenty-Five Seasons of Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival VICTORIA BOND 26LORELT at 30: An Interview with Odaline de la Martínez CHRISTOPHER WILEY REVIEWS BOOK REVIEW 31Leta E. Miller and J. Michele Edwards: Chen Yi ELIZABETH L. KEATHLEY MUSIC REVIEW 33Breath of Songs, edited by Sarah Quartel CAROL ANN WEAVER COMPACT DISC AND DIGITAL RECORDINGS REVIEWS 35Day and Night: Modern Flute and Piano Duos by Women Composers NANETTE KAPLAN SOLOMON 36Kirsten Volness: River Rising KRYSTAL J. FOLKESTADT, nee GRANT 38Dorothy Chang: Flight, in Soaring Spirit ELLEN K. GROLMAN 39Grainne Mulvey: Great Women CAHTERINE LEE RECENT RELEASES 40Compact Disc And Digital Recordings REPORTS 43Association of Canadian Women Composers/ L’Association Compositrices Canadiennes DIANE BERRY 43Black Identities on the Operatic Stage: A Symposium with Music TESSA LARSON AWARDS AND HONORS 46The IAWM congratulates the following award winners! 46Danaë Xanthe Vlasse, Grammy Award Winner MEMBERS’ NEWS 47 ANITA HANAWALTJOURNAL OF THE IAWM1 and programs virtually. We hope that by offering our members the ability to attend the IAWM conference online, we will be able to make attending the conference financially possible given the current rising travel prices and unexpected changes in music due to the effects of Covid. What to Expect from the Conference Program this Year? Keynote and Writing Workshop by Dr. Nina Eidsheim (UCLA) Our featured keynote talk, as well as an additional writing workshop, is by Dr. Nina Eidsheim and takes place on Friday, June 3rd at 2pm (PST) and Saturday, June 4th at 9AM (PST). Dr. Eidsheim’s keynote talk will center on examining institutionalized prac- tices and the reception of normalizing how we listen to music through the lens of white music access, production, vocalization, and history. She will be sharing findings from her research in her groundbreaking work: The Race of Sound (Duke University Press, 2019), and she will guide the attendees on how to disrupt, question, and examine whose voice speaks and whose voice gets heard and listened to. 2022 IAWM CONFERENCE On Saturday, June 4th at 9AM (PST), Dr. Eidsheim will guide us in a Saturday morning writing workshop called 1000 Ways Home, which will help us see, examine, and understand ways in which we appreciate, accept, and understand cultures. Dr. Eidsheim is a leading musicologist and professor from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has written books about voice, race, and materiality including: Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice, and she served as co-editor of Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies and Refiguring American Music, book series for Duke University Press. Dana Reason | Photo Credit: Norman Korpi Dr. Nina Eidsheim Call & (HER) Response, Music in the Time of Change This Conference is our Call for (YOUR) Response. Join us. Registration is Open! To view the full program: https://liberalarts. oregonstate.edu/IAWM2022 It is great to welcome you to another spring as the IAWM Vice President and Chair of the forthcoming IAWM con- ference. It has been a few years since we gathered for the wonderful confer- ence “Women, Feminists, and Music: Transforming Tomorrow Today,” spon- sored by IAWM and Feminist Theory and Music 15 (FT&M15) and held June 6–9, 2019 at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. The conference was successfully chaired by Professor of Composition Beth Denisch and her team of volunteers, students, and faculty. We now invite you to make new friends, hear new ideas and music, and create inspiring memories by registering and attending our forthcoming confer- ence Call & (HER) Response, Music in the Time of Change, June 2-4, 2022. This conference is the first hybrid IAWM conference ever, and it will take place both in person at the Oregon State University campus, in Corvallis, Oregon, as well as a fully online. Over the past few years, many of us have had to pivot to online teaching and research and attending concerts We hope that by offering our members the ability to attend the IAWM conference online, we will be able to make attending the conference financially possible given the current rising travel prices and unexpected changes in music due to the effects of Covid. —DANA REASON2VOLUME 28, NO. 2 • 2022 What else is happening? 10 Concurrent Sessions and More Our program begins at Noon Pacific Standard Time on Thursday, June 2nd, and we will be offering a fully-packed conference. You can expect to choose between two concurrent papers ses- sions on all three days and one to two concurrent workshops on all three days. You will also be able to attend the various virtual listening curated programs with live chat, which will fit the time you are joining us from around the planet. Our hope is that many of the composers and performers will be on LIVE chat for the virtual listening room. Special Feature Streaming LIVE from Antwerp, Belgium: The Virago Symphonic Orchestra Presents Women in Music The concert will be held on Saturday, June 4th at 10:15 (PST). Sixty women, with conductor Pascale Van Os, will perform beautiful music through the ages. The Antwerp-born composer Lara Denies’ new work for ten musi- cians, Beside the Frozen Lake I Stand, will be premiered. Other works include the following for symphony orchestra: Augusta Holmés: La Nuit et L’amour; Fanny Mendelssohn: Overture in C-major; Florence Price: The Oak; Joaquin Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez (Adagio), with guitar soloist Emma Wills; and Caroline Shaw: Entr’acte, for string orchestra. Second Special Feature Streaming Live from Australia: The University of New South Wales The ensemble concert by contem- porary Australian composers will be hosted by Monica Buckland, con- ductor and lecturer at UNSW. Planned features include: Concord concertino, new work for clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and piano by Elizabeth Younan (Australia Ensemble UNSW); Mettle, new work for brass and percussion by Younan (UNSW Wind Symphony, Conductor Paul Vickers); Still, for clarinet and piano by Katy Abbott (Australia Ensemble UNSW); Precious Colours (Pallah-Pallah) by Alice Chance (Burgundian Consort, Conductor Sonia Maddock); Aurora Eora, by Alice Chance (Burgundian Consort); and Exchange by Nicole Murphy (Australia Ensemble UNSW). There will also be a panel dis- cussion: “What’s the state of play for women in music today?” moderated by Monica Buckland. Additionally, the conference will offer 50 papers; 30 mini-workshops; 40 vir- tual listening works; live-film scoring session featuring Cinema’s First Nasty Women (KINO Lorber, July 2022); a Deep Listening Workshop; a live- streamed noontime concert featuring IAWM composers and performers; the OSU Jazz Band with guest Migiwa Miyajima; Dr. Sandra Babb’s Bella Voce (OSU); and music faculty and students and more! This is a truly global conference featuring composers, performers, tech- nologists, sound artists, performance artists, musicologists, deep listeners, educators, freelancers, students, fac- ulty, independents, and more coming to us from Korea, Italy, Spain, Poland, UK, Russia, Hong Kong, Canada, Belgium, United States, and Australia, and more! Who are the members of the Dedicated, Dynamic, and Dazzling Team behind this amazing conference? Please meet: Teil Buck (MM); Dr. Gabriela Alvarado (DMA); Monica Buckland (conductor, University of New South Wales, Sydney); Eline Cote (Virago Symphonic Orchestra, founder, Antwerp); Morgan Davis (MS, William & Mary); Dr. Christina Reitz (Western Carolina University); Christina Rusnak (MA/MM, indepen- dent composer, President of IAWM); Dr. Jane Rigler (University of Colorado, Colorado Springs); Dr. Deborah Nemko (Bridgewater State University); and Dr. Deborah Saidel (independent). We are looking forward to seeing you in June! Dana DANA REASON, PhD Chair of the 2022 IAWM Conference: Call & (HER) Response: Music in the Time of Change Vice-President of IAWM Special thanks to Oregon State University College of Liberal Arts and the Benton County Cultural Coalition/Oregon Arts Commission for their sponsorship.JOURNAL OF THE IAWM3 KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS Historical Keyboard Instruments: Building, Teaching, and Composing ALISSA DURYEE Introduction As a performer, educator, and composer living in France, I have built most of my musical activities around historical keyboard instruments. My approach is to treat these instruments as a family of related and complementary members—from the expressive clav- ichord, to the brilliant and resonant harpsichord, to the different types of fortepianos and organs. It fascinates me that these instruments, despite their mechanical, acoustic, and cul- tural specificities, are all accessible via the same interface. As a performer, I sometimes tailor my performances around one or more given instruments (often traveling with my own), and I respect historical playing techniques. My original com- positions are almost exclusively for keyboard. Night Pieces for piano was the winner of the Judith Lang Zaimont Prize of the 2021 IAWM Search for New Music competition, and Forager’s Journey for clavichord was awarded Second Prize at the International Clavichord Composition Competition of the Nordic Historical Keyboard Festival. In creating new music, my goal is to create works that are idiom- atic to a particular keyboard and that engage with the instrument’s legacy, but also explore new sounds and playing techniques. My performance repertoire ranges from early music to contemporary works, with special emphasis on lit- tle-known compositions. I have been an artist in residence at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, and at several festivals in France and North America such as Les Journées Lyriques, the Amherst Early Music Festival, and the Boston Clavichord Society, where I have performed as a soloist, continuo player, and chamber musician. In 2020, I completed a recording juxtaposing music of the Pennsylvania Moravian community with that of contempo- rary European composers on a historic 1799 Meerbach clavichord; the instru- ment has been in Bethlehem, PA since the 19th century. With cellist Jérôme Huille, I formed the Duo Dialogues. As a result of winning the Concours Musique au Centre competition, we completed a recording tracing the his- tory of music for cello and keyboard on period instruments. In addition to performing, I am active as an educator in several capacities. As a conservatory and workshop teacher, I have developed a particular approach to pedagogy, influenced by my expe- rience with multiple instruments and the practices related to them. I also collaborate with primary and middle school children, sometimes in ways related to my areas of keyboard exper- tise, and sometimes in a broader, more creative way: performing original music for them about sustainable develop- ment as in Snail Mail; co-composing large-scale performances intended to involve children in a collective artistic experience as in Bienvenu au Tribunal, a mock courtroom drama about petty crimes; and preparing a chronicle about a group of extrater- restrials seeking exile on planet Earth after creating an ecological disaster on their home planet as in Les Petits Hommes Verts. Building Historical Keyboard Instruments This article focuses mainly on my experience building historical key- board instruments, as well as the impact of this experience on my per- forming and teaching. While studying performance during my conservatory years, I pursued building and teaching largely for practical reasons—I needed instruments, and I needed money. In retrospect, it was enriching to work on these projects alongside my studies, although it was burdensome in terms of workload. As an undergraduate piano major, I became interested in the harpsichord and clavichord because a collection of historical keyboard instruments (many in playable condition) was available in the music department at Vassar College. In addition, the collection included high-quality, recently-made copies of an organetto and a harpsichord. Given the muse- um-piece quality of some of these instruments and the niche reper- toire of others, they were woefully under-played, and awareness of their existence among the student body was shockingly low. In the years just after my graduation, though I was busy pursuing modern piano study, I came to miss playing historical instruments. I wanted to develop expertise so that I could play whichever instrument best expresses a particular piece, whether performing an older work or composing a new one. In creating new music, my goal is to create works that are idiomatic to a particular keyboard and that engage with the instrument’s legacy, but also explore new sounds and playing techniques. —ALISSA DURYEE4VOLUME 28, NO. 2 • 2022 I craved this breadth as a musician more than I aspired to focus entirely on the modern piano. I moved to France in 1997 to continue my studies, but, at the time, the educa- tional climate was not very open to this kind of project. Most conservatories in France were offering degrees in only one instrument, with little encourage- ment for students interested in being multi-instrumentalists. Age limits were very common, making it difficult to integrate a new field of study after age 25. (Thankfully, the rules have been changing in recent years: key- board departments have emerged in some conservatories, age limits have been raised in certain programs, and graduate-level courses of study are becoming more widespread in part- nership between universities.) Building a Clavichord I realized I had no time to waste get- ting instruments of my own, as well as the knowledge needed to care for them. Building seemed like the most affordable and comprehensive way to do this: I decided to start with a clav- ichord. This is a less time-consuming endeavor than a harpsichord, and it presents inherent advantages: relative portability (depending on the type of clavichord) and great benefits to touch and technique. I set about looking for kits and eventually bought one from the Early Music Shop in England. It is a copy of an anonymous instrument conserved at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, Netherlands. Large enough to have a good sound and a useful range, it is also portable enough for travel by car, train, and airplane (though this mode of trans- portation can be challenging). I assembled the kit during one hot New Jersey summer on my grand- mother’s dining room table. Working a few hours each day, it took about three months to complete the instru- ment, including decoration. Although I was able to finish using just a basic set of tools (chisels, hammers, files, sand- paper, paintbrushes, and a power drill), the project could have progressed much faster, with a slightly more pre- cise result (better looking corners), had I had access to a woodworking shop. The clavichord is a sturdy and useable instrument, which is still with me today. Clavichords are notoriously quiet instruments, but this model strikes a nice balance: soft enough for late-night practicing and also loud enough for per- formance in small- and medium-sized spaces. It has enabled me to develop my playing skills in ways not possible otherwise: tone production, weight transfer, and mastery of articulation are all improved by clavichord playing. For composer-keyboardists like Bach, Handel, and Mozart, the clavichord was a discreet and portable instru- ment, enabling practice in many circumstances, enriching the abilities of a keyboard player, and useful as a companion to composing. With a clavichord of my own, I have been able to practice in many a hotel room, on porches, in spare rooms while others sleep. I have been able to teach workshops in France and in North America, and the instrument has proven robust in hot climates as well as cooler ones. A special treat for me was the opportunity to see and play the original instrument that served as a model for mine while traveling in the Netherlands. Alissa Duryee tuning the clavichord she constructedJOURNAL OF THE IAWM5 Building a Harpsichord I decided that I also needed a harp- sichord, but this would be a more ambitious project. To undertake it, I needed a grant opportunity and access to a dedicated workspace. Through the Fondation des États-Unis, the international home for students with a cultural program where I lived at the time, I was able to obtain a grant from the Harriet Hale Woolley Foundation. 1 The Foundation also provided me with a workspace inde- pendent from the room where I was living. This small, no frills, poorly-lit basement room, previously used for the storage of broken chairs, was cleared and repurposed into a make- shift workshop. Empty except for a large central table and situated between a boiler room and a communal prac- tice room with thin walls and an ailing upright piano, this became a second living space for me for just over a year. I spent many a late evening and many an all-nighter sanding to the sounds of bubbling pipes and the practicing of singers who didn’t realize any- body could overhear them. My “shop” became a regular stop for party-goers at the end of their night out; they would come to share a round of beer 1For additional information, see https://www. paris.edu/harriet-hale-woolley-scholarship-for- visual-artists-and-musicians/ and check on my progress. The process became part of the product, as I worked toward an inaugural concert, which also featured an exhibit about the “making of.…” Wanting an instrument that would allow me to study all repertoires, I opted for a French Double Kit from The Paris Workshop. 2 For a first harpsichord, it felt important to have an instrument with multiple keyboards and a broad range—meaning that any historical harpsichord repertoire could be played on it. Additionally, this model trans- poses to three pitches : A= 440 (used for playing contemporary music with modern instruments and sometimes Renaissance music), A=415 (most often used for playing historical repertoire and in chamber music on period instru- ments), and A= 392 (a particularly mellow pitch used for some French Baroque works). In picking an instrument that can “do it all,” I had to sacrifice the inter- esting specificities of other types of instruments. The debate about whether any instrument is ideal for “playing it all” is a topic far beyond the scope of this article—and it was also beyond the scope of my reasoning at the time. I began working with my very rudimen- tary tools, adding an electric sander to what I had used for the clavichord, as well as a great many objects to assist with all different types of clamping: C clamps, of course, but also heavy books, techniques using twine, tooth- picks, masking tape, etc. Despite my low-tech approach, with perseverance it was possible to produce an instrument that looks attractive and sounds good. I still use it for concerts. As with the clav- ichord, there are things that could be better, but thankfully most of them are either not easily visible, not audible, or improvable through further tweaking and regulation. When the instrument was completed, I asked the shop that had delivered the kit to help me move it into my new apartment on the other side of Paris. The movers did not hide their surprise when they saw that I had accomplished 2http://www.theparisworkshop.com/en/ index-en.html and http://www.theparisworkshop. com/en/k/hemsch.html the job, confiding to me that the setup I was working with seemed “subop- timal,” though they had not wanted to discourage me by saying so at the time. Now that I had two instruments, I temporarily closed the chapter on instrument building. It was time for me to turn my focus back towards other projects. I did return to the workshop experience in several brief phases later on, once I had become a more accom- plished player and wanted better regulation. After about fifteen years of being used and moved around, my harpsichord needed some refreshing. I used my first maternity leave to redo the case painting, this time taking care that any two surfaces that touch during a move were the same color (this avoids friction marks in con- trasting colors). I also added quite a few more elements to the soundboard painting, loosely inspired by the plant and animal life found on a coral reef. It is my hope to undertake new building projects in a more intense and inno- vative capacity in the future, maybe involving electronics. Lessons from the Building Process First, it is important to draw distinctions between different types of instrument building projects. It’s helpful to visu- alize a spectrum: at one end, there is a kit, prepared by someone else, that one can use to assemble the instrument. It is usually copied from a historical source, and the goal is to use it to play historical repertoire. My work falls into this end of the spectrum. The building process was labor-intensive but not especially risky. The kit is accessible to anyone with basic manual skills and a lot of determination. The other end of the spectrum involves designing and making a totally new instrument. Although this sounds like a contemporary concept, it is also a fair description of the evolution of keyboard instruments throughout history. Such a project requires skill, experience, and vision, with no guar- antee that the creator’s efforts will be adopted by performers and accepted by listeners. I hope to undertake this kind of bold project in the future. Soundboard of the harpsichord that Alissa Duryee built6VOLUME 28, NO. 2 • 2022 There are many areas of the spectrum between these two extremes: making your own plans based on measure- ments taken in a museum, working on new instruments collaboratively in a workshop environment, studying do-it-yourself books, adding new electronic dimensions to acoustic instruments, and so forth. There are also many differences between my two kit experiences, mostly in the types of prime materials that are supplied. The clavichord required me to perform many basic tasks: keycaps had to be individually cut and filed, shellacs had to be mixed from flakes, and the pins were not drilled—making stringing a painstaking task. The harpsichord came with certain analogous steps already completed, as it made sense for these to be finished in the shop before delivery. Whatever the prime material and design of the project, creativity in problem solving is needed to finish the process. In my case, to achieve a bal- anced keyboard, I needed weights that I did not have and could not afford. This led me to my local pharmacist, who agreed to weigh pennies for me to create small and precise weights. Later, having no idea how to go about gilding with gold leaf, I wandered into a building in a district with many pic- ture-framing businesses and knocked on doors until I found a woman willing to let me watch her guild a frame (this was before YouTube). I had many inter- actions in hardware stores with people who knew as little about harpsichords as I knew about how to implement my next clamping scheme, and I was once informed by the entire staff of a paint store that one “‘simply doesn’t paint keyboard instruments.” These problem-solving and interper- sonal episodes went hand in hand with other opportunities for growth. For example, learning to string and tune in various temperaments was an eye-and-mind-opening experience. My experiences with building gave me insights into composing for keyboards and exploring extended techniques with them. The most important takeaway from the project, however, was my decision to view the diversity of keyboard instruments as a value in itself, rather than a historical progres- sion from primitive to advanced. I have found that exploring the wealth of dif- ferent types of keyboard instruments to be far richer than concentrating on one; it has opened the exciting possibility of developing relationships between players, composers, and instrument builders. For this reason, I would recommend the instrument-building experience to anyone considering it. Passing On My Experiences Through Teaching At about the same time I was building these instruments, I began teaching piano to support my studies. The seemingly unrelated activities shared a common need: to produce means and tools to further my own learning path ahead as a musician. Like many other musicians, I believe that trans- mitting knowledge as you are learning it yourself is an excellent way to crystal- lize your thoughts and methodology. The more I delved into early music and performance practice, the more I began to question standard contempo- rary instrumental teaching methods: learning an instrument’s technique and repertoire is often dissociated from other aspects of musicianship. I became interested in the profiles of prolific composers/improvisers/key- boardists who were trained before the existence of modern conservato- ries. I completed a research project about the Bach, Couperin, and Scarlatti families in an attempt to understand how musical transmission took place in these families, and I learned that the pedagogical focus seems to have been on musicianship with no limit as to how many types of musical expressions an artist might have. Focusing on a par- ticular instrument was of secondary importance. Over the years, as I shifted from teaching privately to holding positions in music schools and public conservatories, I honed a teaching style in keeping with this philosophy. I am currently a professor at the Conservatoire de l’Agglo du Pays de Dreux, where I teach keyboards as a family, enabling students to explore the various instruments. I am fortu- nate to have a classroom with a piano, an organ, and a harpsichord, which all of my students play interchangeably in their first years, choosing to specialize (or not) as they come of age musically. Outside of my own classroom, I offer workshops on early keyboards in other conservatories and in festivals for stu- dents interested in branching out. I am now in a position to offer solutions to the problems that I encountered when I wished to study early keyboard instru- ments and was told that I was too old. For example, I am currently teaching harpsichord to a thirty-year-old pianist. I encourage my students to sing and compose, and I provide an opportunity for them to participate in an annual Pianoforte Meeting, a multi-keyboard festival of concerts, workshops, and masterclasses that I organize in collab- oration with Bart van Oort. Despite my unconventional approach to teaching, I was able to successfully defend my philosophy before a jury for my tenure examination, and I am currently assis- tant director of my conservatory. My experience as a teacher of historical instruments and as a builder of two opened up many creative possibilities for me, and as an educator, I hope in turn to open up creative possibilities for others. My experiences with building gave me insights into composing for keyboards and exploring extended techniques with them. The most important takeaway from the project, however, was my decision to view the diversity of keyboard instruments as a value in itself, rather than a historical progression from primitive to advanced. —ALISSA DURYEENext >