Message from Bill Pelto

As we begin a new year for The CMS Fund, I want to thank and congratulate Jim Scott, who served as the Fund’s president for these past years. His leadership was vital in shoring up the Fund’s finances and in setting a course for its next chapter. Several experienced Board members have agreed to continue their service—including Secretary Betty Anne Younker, Treasurer John Miller, and Director Matt Shevitz. One of our first tasks has been to consider likely new Board members who will help us champion our mission and provide stewardship for the Fund’s resources. We hope to empanel a new Board that will accelerate our philanthropic trajectory.

In the meanwhile, the CMS Fund has continued its mission to support colleagues and our student members in their scholarly pursuits as researchers, performers, and engaged practitioners. Each CMS student member who presented their work at last week’s conference in Long Beach was provided a $200 travel stipend, totaling $4,000 committed by the Fund. Additionally, with the assistance of colleagues from ATMI and the CMS Committee for Community Engagement, we recently identified recipients of this year’s CMS Seed Grants, Education in Music Award, and Instructional Technology Initiative Award. Award amounts totaling $2,300 will support projects related to pedagogies that leverage open-source software, recruitment and retention of minority-identifying music educators, new opera that combines classical Chinese traditions with US-based street dance, and electronic music in a high school curriculum. And finally, The CMS Fund was honored to sponsor the Long Beach conference’s reception to “celebrate CMS authors.” 

Musicking in Long Beach

PDF version available here.

The essence of music lies not in musical works but in taking part in performance, in social action. Music is thus not so much a noun as a verb, ‘to music’. To music is to take part in any capacity in a musical performance, and the meaning of musicking lies in the relationships that are established between the participants by the performance. Musicking is part of that iconic, gestural process of giving and receiving information about relationships which unites the living world, and it is in fact a ritual by means of which the participants not only learn about, but directly experience, their concepts of how they relate, and how they ought to relate, to other human beings and to the rest of the world.

- Christopher Small

CMS’ 65th National Conference was brimming with unbridled creativity, challenging conversations, connective moments, and joyful musicking. Here are but only a few highlights for me.

Opening our time together, Kelly Caballero connected us to the Tongva territorial lands through song and poetry, while Cambodian American filmmaker/rapper praCh Ly took us on a difficult journey from the Killing Fields of Cambodia to life on the streets of Long Beach to creating community through narration and rap. Both artists unpacked complex histories best told through art, story, emotion, and music and you could feel their impact on everyone in the room: centuries of weight pressing down on our chests.