Upcoming Events
Sunday, Nov. 13th, 6 pm
Healthy Potluck hosted by Dr. Leclair. Bring your favorite dish to share. Check Facebook/email for directions.
Wednesday, Dec. 7th, 7 pm
Self-care/burnout session (joint event with OCMEA)
We will define self-care and strategies that can lead to short and long-term physical and psychological improvements. We will also discuss burnout, its phases, and how regular self-care can prevent it. Location TBA.
Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Elainie Lillios, Associate Professor of Composition
By Sarah Puckett
How do you get something from nothing? Dr. Elainie Lillios finds that it’s precisely when you open yourself to the nothing that the possibilities for creativity become endless. It’s all around us—we just need to find a way to access it.
“Who teaches us how to listen?” Lillios asks. “For instance, your piano teacher says, ‘You made a mistake there.’ Is that teaching me how to listen or is that teaching me how to identify when I made a mistake? Is there a difference between those things?” The pursuit of learning how to listen is what drew Lillios to Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening®. The threefold philosophy and practice aims to cultivate awareness and conscious listening through meditation, physical activities, and listening in dreams.
The first step for Lillios was turning inward, developing awareness of self and realizing just how much noise we make as individuals. When she turned outward and connected with others in her practice, her creativity blossomed even more. Some of the physical improvisations which inspire participants to boogie unreservedly seemed strange at first. But soon the sense of community became a source of safety, encouraging Lillios to push herself farther, especially in sound improvisations. “What you’re doing is exploring and there is no mistake in that exploration,” she says. “If you make the response that your inner self wants to make, you cannot make a mistake. Whether that response is “caw,” or “screech,” or “beep,” or “bop,” there is no judgment on that.”
Reflecting on a Deep Listening® retreat she attended, Lillios says, “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I wonder what kind of music she [Oliveros] is going to play for us.’ But we didn’t listen to any music the entire weekend. We just listened. I could tune in to my own creativity in a way that I hadn’t done before.”
When Lillios is able to access her creative stores, the benefits extend even beyond the success of her compositions. She believes that being creative actually influences her sense of wellbeing. “My own sense of wellbeing is driven more by creativity than it is driven by academic knowledge or technical knowledge or technical ability,” she says. “I have the greatest sense of wellness when I feel that I’m being creative and that I’m able to share that creativity with my students.” According to Lillios, when we seek perfection, we often look in the wrong place. While we may look great on paper we might still lead an unbalanced life.
“When we talk about the idea of wellness we’re not just talking about one aspect of ourselves,” says Lillios. “We’re talking about physical, emotional, psychological, mental. For example, do I feel engaged with myself? Do I feel engaged with my activities, my work, my studies? Do I feel engaged with my community, with society, with culture? Do I have a place within the context of the whole?”
If Lillios engages in life through working creatively, practicing Deep Listening®, and connecting with students and community, then she feels truly well. “If I’m the greatest composer that ever lived and my students are unhappy in their own studies, to me that’s not wellness,” she says. “Wellness extends beyond me.”
For more information on Deep Listening®: www.deeplistening.org or search Deep Listening on Facebook.
Recipe: Curried Pumpkin Soup
From Drew Sevel
Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic
1 teaspoon canola oil
Lime juice to taste
2 cups of chicken or vegetable broth
1 ½ cups pumpkin or the flesh of one 2-3 pound sugar pumpkin
2 teaspoons curry powder (or make your own by seasoning to taste with cumin, turmeric, coriander, nutmeg, and cardamom)
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ half-and-half (For a healthier version, use zero or reduced fat dairy)
Cilantro to garnish
Pepper to taste
Directions: Sautee onion and garlic in oil until onion is translucent. Add all remaining ingredients except half-and-half. Bring to a boil and simmer until pumpkin is tender. Blend with a food processer or mash pumpkin with a fork. Mix in half-and-half. Serve garnished with cilantro.
Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic
1 teaspoon canola oil
Lime juice to taste
2 cups of chicken or vegetable broth
1 ½ cups pumpkin or the flesh of one 2-3 pound sugar pumpkin
2 teaspoons curry powder (or make your own by seasoning to taste with cumin, turmeric, coriander, nutmeg, and cardamom)
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ half-and-half (For a healthier version, use zero or reduced fat dairy)
Cilantro to garnish
Pepper to taste
Directions: Sautee onion and garlic in oil until onion is translucent. Add all remaining ingredients except half-and-half. Bring to a boil and simmer until pumpkin is tender. Blend with a food processer or mash pumpkin with a fork. Mix in half-and-half. Serve garnished with cilantro.
Overview of Mindfulness for Musicians Workshop
By Dan Frakes
Mindfulness is acting consciously and being aware of your body and thoughts; further, being aware in the moment without judgment.
How can mindfulness be beneficial to your practice?
>helps you identify the reason for problems in your playing so you can solve them efficiently and without harshly criticizing yourself
>frees the body to perform without being bogged down in analytical thought
meditationformusicians.com is a useful resource offering various listening and practice exercises.
Observations after doing a meditation exercise from meditationformusicians.com:
>could hear body: became aware of body tensions
>identified tension in areas of body not even considered before
>found it difficult to NOT respond to unexpected sounds
Other ideas for exercises included playing one note for five minutes several times a day or using free improvisation to tune in to your body.
Simply Self-Care
By Drew Sevel
It’s that time in the semester when responsibilities start to pile up. Although it is important to keep commitments, your ability to do so will be much greater if you take some time to be committed to yourself.
What is self-care? It is engaging in valued activities to promote balance in your life, foster feelings of satisfaction, establish balance, and restore health, leading to long-term benefits. Here are some tips to help you stay vitalized.
1. Adopt the right attitude: taking care of yourself is not selfish! Addressing personal needs will promote better professional, musical, and academic functioning.
2. Relaxation doesn’t have to be passive. Identify an area of your life you would like to improve (emotional, relational, spiritual, physical, intellectual) and set goals.
3. Be flexible! Try out a variety of activities that keep you mentally and physically fresh so that nurturing yourself doesn’t become a chore.
