Detailed program – Music and Collective Access

Content

Day 1

8:00-9:00: Registration

9:00-9:30: Welcome speech

9:30-10:00: Lecture 1
Paula Gómez Martín – Literary Pathways Toward Inclusive Sonic Experience (Online)

This paper uses three works by Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Mrs Dalloway, as miniature case studies to show how literary forms can model multisensory modes of listening and expand the conceptual scope of Disability Justice’s principle of Collective Access (Berne et al., 2018). The principle of Collective Access embraces a political commitment to meeting access needs collaboratively, but it does not fully theorize the multisensory nature of corporeal experiences. In particular, a commitment to Collective Access leaves underdeveloped how different sensory modes contribute to shared experiences of sound, and how supporting a range access practices can take such plurality into account.

Historical accounts of blind Iberian performers of the XVI century and philosophical models such as Charles Sanders Peirce’s doctrine of synechism, continuity across different experiential domains, similarly show that listening is never an exclusively aural practice, but is instead distributed across vibration, spatial inference, and kinesthetic memory (Cumming, 1999; Barasch, 2001; Peirce, 1893/1998). Woolf’s fiction addresses this gap directly: in her novels, sound becomes colour, atmosphere, rhythm, and vibration, revealing hearing as a relational and distributed process shaped by movement, memory, and affective vibrations (Cheng, 2016).

My analysis of the selected novels by Woolf demonstrates that her poetics refine the theoretical foundations of Collective Access. I argue that accessible musical practices must move beyond auditory-centered assumptions and engage the plurality of perceptual modes through which we encounter sound.

Born in Huércal-Overa (Spain) in 2004, she began studying Comparative Literatures at the University of Granada in 2022-2026 with the support of a la Caixa Foundation scholarship, having previously been a scholar of the Amancio Ortega Foundation through the Advanced Talent Training program in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and MIT. She has also participated in short courses with United World Colleges, multiple Erasmus+ programs, completed a teaching internship in Manchester, and studied abroad at the University of British Columbia. Her academic interests focus on literature, cultural heritage, and music. Building on early training in guitar and folk dance, she combines long-term volunteer work with the Virgen de la Salud Folklore Group with her membership in the Tuna Femenina de Medicina de Granada. She aspires to an academic career in literary and cultural research and teaching and is currently developing a research project on the literary origins of traditional folk lyrics.

10:00-10:30: Lecture 2
Rhoda Bernard – Implementing Best Practices in Accessible Music Education (Online)

All over the world, music educators – whether they teach private lessons, classes, or ensembles – are finding that their student population is becoming increasingly diverse in many ways, including their learning schemes, or how they learn best. In some cases, student learning schemes may vary due to a physical, cognitive, developmental, or emotional disability or diagnosis. At the same time, though, every individual learns differently — including those who do not identify as having a disability and/or being neurodivergent. The many different ways that people learn has made it increasingly challenging for music educators to reach and teach all of their students effectively. This is where Accessible Music Education comes in! This session will introduce you to Accessible Music Education: an evidence-based, interdisciplinary framework of principles, habits of mind, and strategies to reach and teach every student, no matter how they learn best. In the session, you will be exposed to new ways of thinking, and you will gain direct experience with the tools that you need to nurture rich, effective educational environments that promote neurodiversity and affirm learning differences. You will learn how to plan, teach, and assess using evidence- based accessible music education strategies. You will develop a deeper understanding of ways to anticipate, reduce and remove barriers to student engagement, participation and learning. Attend this session, and you will head home with new tools that you can use right away to make the music education that you provide truly accessible for every student.

Dr. Rhoda Bernard is the Founding Managing Director of the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education and the Assistant Chair of the Music Education Department at Berklee College of Music. An internationally renowned expert in Accessible Arts Education, Bernard regularly presents keynote presentations and research at conferences throughout the U.S. and abroad, and she provides professional development workshops for educators in local, national, and international forums. Her book, Accessible Arts Education: Principles, Habits, and Strategies to Unleash Every Student’s Creativity and Learning was released in September 2025. Bernard’s work has been published in many book chapters and in numerous journals. An active arts education advocate, she is the immediate past chair of the Arts Education Advisory Council of Americans for the Arts. A vocalist and pianist, she performs regularly with a number of klezmer bands and has recorded two CDs with the band Klezamir.

10:30-11:00: Lecture 3
Oliver George-Brown – Who Cares?: Performing Transecology in the Mojave Desert (In person)

Across corporate, institutional, and governance paradigms, our current sociopolitical landscape is characterised by a profound lack of care with regards to the material and cultural wellbeing of multispecies communities. What might it mean, then, to instead redeploy care as the guiding principle for collaborative creative activities? In response to incessant bombardment by information, accreditation, and rhetorics of efficiency and progress, how might participatory event-making instead endorse “unproductive” time spent with other beings, human or otherwise? In Who Cares?: Performing Transecology in the Mojave Desert, I advance the concept of “transecology” as a framework for creative practice which synthesises queer and ecological thinking. Transecology entails a contingent, exploratory attitude towards working with creative elements including sounding bodies, technologies, sculptural materials, language, and other multispecies beings. Throughout this paper, I apply the framework of transecological practice to the multi-artist performances, installations, and soundwalks presented at Performing Transecology: A Desert Event (October 2025), in California’s Mojave Desert. I identify how the event’s structure and featured projects each exemplify the key characteristics of transecology: care, vulnerability, contingency, friction, and processual time. Adducing performance scholarship alongside contributions from interdisciplinary theorists, I develop an account of care as making the time to take the time to spend time with other beings. In articulating this temporal imperative in the context of musical performance, I evaluate the relevance of rehearsal and improvisation to transecological practice. Throughout Who Cares?, I investigate how adopting a deliberate ethics of care in creative event-making promotes attuned, socially-informed multispecies communities.

Oliver George-Brown (he/him) is a conceptual artist and scholar originally from Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, and now based in Los Angeles, CA. His interdisciplinary, “transecological” works take the form of performance art and sound-sculptural installations, often incorporating everyday objects, vernacular media, and interactive technologies. George-Brown is deeply committed to amplifying the voices and aesthetics of the historically overlooked. This reflects particularly in his prioritisation of mundane, serendipitous aesthetic encounters; as well as his research interests in urban ecologies, Fluxus performance art, and contemporary theories of queerness, relationality, and contingency. George-Brown was the 2020—21 Dots+Loops Composition Fellow (Meanjin/Brisbane), and has been released on Remote Telescopes (NY). He holds a BMus in Composition & Music Technology and a BFA (Hons) in sculpture, and is currently a PhD candidate in Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology at the University of California, Irvine.

11:00-11:10: Short break

11:10-12:10: Workshop 1 (ArtsAbly)
Diane Kolin – Braille music discovery workshop (In person)

This workshop explores Braille music with students who are used to reading traditional music notation. The workshop starts with a global introduction on the system itself, and on the difference between Braille alphabet and Braille Music. Then participants dive into basic Braille Music reading. With the use of Braille Music printed scores and a provided basic chart explaining how to read the music notes, they get to feel different scores and get used to the notation system. Finally, we talk about technology and tools used to read and work with Braille Music digitally.

Diane Kolin is a singer, a music educator, and a voice teacher. As a singer, she performs in various genres, from jazz to Baroque music and French chanson repertoire. She teaches voice to children and adults. She developed pedagogical tools and workshops for singers with disabilities to learn how to sing with a changing body or from a non-standing position. She is a professional member of RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professional with Disabilities), and of the Recording Academy. She completed her PhD in Musicology at York University, Toronto. She is the founder of ArtsAbly, a not-for-profit offering diverse activities related to disability in the arts, including workshops, lectures, free resources, and a podcast highlighting the works of artists with disabilities, called ArtsAbly in Conversation.

12:10-1:20: Lunch

1:20-1:50: Lecture 4
Gabrielle Berry – Silent Sounds: Access in the Age of Silent Film (In person)

Today, accessibility is often positioned as an extraneous component of film and media texts, designed to simply meet regulatory requirements. Captions and audio-description tracks are frequently created by third parties, with little input from the original sound designers, cinematographers, and filmmakers. Yet, an alternative access model exists, within cinema’s own history.

In this paper, I examine the silent film era (1890s-1920s) through the lens of sonic access. The period before the arrival of synchronized sound has long been understood as a ‘golden age’ for D/deaf audiences, defined by the many ways in which it visualizes, describes, and represents sound. From intertitles to orators, live music to pantomime, the audio-visual hallmarks of the silent period arguably offer a radical model of the creative, narrative, and functional integration of access into the cinema experience. Drawing together the past, present and future of cinema sound, this paper reconsiders definitions of accessibility, and the role access can play in making cinematic meaning.

Gabrielle Berry is a PhD candidate in Cinema and Media studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on the intersections of sound, disability, and technology studies. Her dissertation project, “[♪♪♪]: The Sonic Resonances of Captions,” addresses the relationship between closed captions and sound in cinema, television, and new media, to show how captions create sonic meaning and structure the audio-visual experience for D/deaf, hard of hearing and hearing audiences. Gabrielle is a recipient of the SSHRC and Killam doctoral awards, and the Claudia Gorbman Graduate Student Writing Award. She is also a member of the Public Scholars Initiative Program at UBC. Her work appears in The Soundtrack; Music, Sound and the Moving Image, and Cinephile.

1:50-2:20: Lecture 5
Caroline Heggie – Supporting Dyslexic Learners: Improving Instructional Strategies for Undergraduate Music Theory (Online)

Recent efforts in music theory pedagogy emphasize accessibility and inclusive teaching practices, yet dyslexic learners remain underrepresented. Undergraduate theory classrooms often privilege rapid symbol decoding, notational fluency, and working memory efficiency, which can disadvantage neurodiverse students. Research on dyslexia (Shaywitz) highlights cognitive strengths such as pattern recognition and big-picture thinking, yet timed or symbol-heavy exercises may fail to capture these abilities. Case studies (Parsons) show that slow-paced, scaffolded instruction allows dyslexic students to externalize thought processes, reducing cognitive overload and revealing musical insight. Cross-modal and multimodal approaches (Louden), combining auditory, visual, and kinesthetic input, further enhance comprehension.

Building on Cognitive Load Theory, this presentation examines how historical and contemporary strategies reduce extraneous cognitive demands in music theory instruction. Shape-note singing highlights pattern recognition and auditory-visual integration, while multimodal digital tools clarify structural relationships and reinforce patterns. Movement-based rhythm exercises and perceptual listening tasks support working memory and attention (Chenette). Sequenced exercises using kinesthetic and visual cues guide students’ focus toward underlying musical concepts, allowing engagement without overload.

This presentation introduces revised theory and aural-skills assignments designed to support dyslexic learners. Tasks scaffold learning steps, integrate multimodal reinforcement, and provide alternative cues, helping students focus on musical structure and conceptual understanding rather than rapid decoding. Findings highlight the need for explicit guidance for instructors and point toward classroom-based studies to identify effective strategies. These revisions demonstrate practical ways to make postsecondary theory instruction more accessible while maintaining rigor and encourage exploration of adaptive approaches, fostering deeper musical understanding for all students.

Caroline Heggie is an independent scholar in music theory from the United States, now based in the United Kingdom. She holds a Master of Arts in Music Education and a Master of Music in Music Theory, and her research focuses on music theory pedagogy, neurodiversity, and music by women composers. Caroline has over a decade of teaching experience, working with learners of all ages—from early childhood through undergraduate students in the US—and in both primary and secondary schools. She holds a teaching license in the United States, Qualified Teacher Status in the United Kingdom, and works one-to-one with neurodivergent students to support their learning. An active performer in East Anglia, Caroline plays violin and is engaged in community, educational, and ensemble music-making.

2:20-2:30: Short break

2:30-3:00: Lecture 6
Cecilia Hiros – ‘Eye-Music’: Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Knowledge-Making as Musical Practice (In person)

In this paper, I develop a theory of ‘eye-music’, a deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) form of knowledge. I use this approach to analyze musical composition and performance through English-Armenian and hard-of-hearing (HoH) composer Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian’s (b. 1986) piece Inkwells (2016). I propose that music composed from a D/HH perspective communicates lived experiences that can be felt and seen in performance.

This piece is composed for solo voice and accompanying audio track of ‘found sounds’, including glass inkwells. The handmade Inkwells score features cut-out shapes and hand drawn rabbits that highlight the significance of visuals as musical knowledge. Horrocks-Hopayian calls her integration of art and music “eye-music,” a term coined by Deaf poet David Wright to describe imagined sonic responses to visual stimuli. I argue that the composer uses ‘eye-music’ to represent D/HH sonic experiences, such as missing words and repetitive phrases. For example, soprano Zaizan Horrock-Hopayian in her performance video includes a repeating, leaping 3rd figure to sonically evoke her interpretation of leaping rabbits for the audience.

Through conversations with Horrocks-Hopayian and extrapolations on my experience of hearing loss in close readings of Inkwells, I uncover HoH approaches to music to explore the impact of sight for compositional and musical decisions. I draw from theories of embodiment, perception and cognition, and disability studies, to encourage an understanding of musical knowledge beyond normative hearing. These theories and analyses then lay the framework to develop how the D/HH perception, ‘eye-music’, can be understood in musical practice.

Cecilia Hiros (she/her) is a 5th-year PhD Candidate in Music Theory at the University of Michigan. She has completed two bachelor’s degrees in Harp Performance (‘21) and Music Theory (‘21) also from the University of Michigan. Cecilia’s research is centered around the intersection of Disability Studies and Music Theory, studying the perception and embodiment of disability through performance, composition, and listening. Her second focus includes sonic constructions of disability in video game music and spatial audio. As a disabled scholar, the core of her research and teaching philosophy is rooted in a deep commitment to disability advocacy and accessibility. When she is not studying or teaching she enjoys spending her time playing video games and rock climbing.

3:00-3:30: Lecture 7
Elizabeth McLain – Music as Crip Space: DisCoTec Artist Residencies (Online)

When Gaelynn Lea, Molly Joyce, Adrian Anantawan, and the Music Inclusion Ensemble performed at the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech in October 2025, the concert featured more professional disabled musicians and access features than any previous performance in our region of Southwest Virginia. The audience and venue staff experienced disability as creativity, aesthetic resource, culture, community, and joy.

Although imperfect, the event’s radical approach to accessibility facilitated community building through what s. e. smith calls “crip space, a communal belonging, a deep rightness that comes from not having to justify your existence” (2020). The diversity of bodyminds onstage, backstage, and in the audience formed a complex web of musicking. Comments from attendees expressed in emails, feedback to the venue, and student lab reports suggest that the evening’s echoes haunt them, compelling them to reforge those ephemeral connections with individuals and organizations. The disability justice dream conjured with strings, keyboards, voices, signs, and captions in crip space can be made manifest when we move together towards interdependent care webs and resilient disability community.

The ableist academy devalues research led by disabled people that directly supports the disability community; however, those of us in music & disability studies can leverage our individual privilege and collective power to nurture liberation. I offer practical advice from the DisCoTec Artist Residencies – including tales of access thievery (Smilges, 2023), failing forward, and the emotional labor of interdependence – in eager expectation that together, we can bring our people home through accessible musicking.

Elizabeth McLain, PhD (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Musicology and Director of Disability Studies at Virginia Tech. A scholar of music and spirituality in the twentieth century, she has published on George Crumb and Olivier Messiaen. Her lived experience as a chronically ill rollator-wielding autistic compels her to transform music scholarship through the principles of disability justice, and she has had the privilege of shifting her career towards community-driven research. Thanks to a grant from the Mellon Foundation, McLain co-directs the Disability Community Technology Center with Ashley Shew and leads Open the Gates Gaming. With the support of an NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant and ACLS Digital Justice Seed and Development Grants, her a2ru’s Ground Works team documented the inaugural CripTech incubator with an emphasis on consent and access. Recent publications include “Unseen Sound: One Step into the Blind Future (Academic Access Version),” with Andy Slater in Leonardo.

3:30-3:40: Short break

3:40-4:10: Lecture 8
Bruce Petherick – Inclusion and Community: A Performer’s Perspective (In person)

Traditional inclusive performance practice has mainly centred on the audience experience. This presentation focuses on the neurodivergent performer, drawing on my experiences as an international musician and composer, including accompanying Count Basie Big Band and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and conducting in London’s West End. Using my dual perspective as an autistic performer and an accessibility consultant (Xenia Concerts, Toronto), I will explore how my own recent journey of autistic discovery revealed a lifetime of professional adaptation both in my performing and conducting career. This presentation will demonstrate how inclusive performances need to expand from the idea that hyper-reactive sensory needs are the primary consideration. Personal storytelling and research takeaways will highlight how broader knowledge of neurodivergent differences across multiple domains can lead to greater accessibility and inclusion.

I will present a practice-based case study from my role as Artistic Director of the White Rock City Orchestra, detailing our co-design of an accessible rehearsal and performance space. Ultimately, the presentation will illuminate how, when the neurodivergent artist’s agency is foundational, it generates more flexible, nuanced, and resilient practices. A neuro-affirming and responsive approach benefits all participants and expands the very possibilities of inclusive performance.

Bruce Petherick is an Autistic musician, advocate, and coach based in Vancouver. Originally from Australia, he moved to Canada in 2001. His formal training includes a Master’s in Computer Music and studies in composition and improvisation. His diverse career began as a percussionist with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, later switching to piano. He has toured with the Count Basie and Woody Herman big bands, accompanied Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and worked internationally as a music director for theatre. After a hiatus from performing when he was the Autistic Advocate with Autism Canada, he has recently returned to music. He now works as a film/TV composer, leads the postmodern classical trio “Crimson Crescendo,” and serves as Artistic Director of the White Rock Symphony Orchestra.

4:10-4:40: Lecture-recital 1
Michele Cheng & Micah Huang – Live, Beyond the Edge (Online)

As a duo, multi-instrumentalists Michele Cheng and Micah Huang create spontaneously in the moment, informed but also deformed by the multiplicity of where they came from. Their music is a way of cathartically inhabiting and exploring their marginal positions in relation to American musico-cultural identities and genres. This is reflective of key aspects of their social experience: for example, as a biracial, bicultural person and a 1.5 generation American. The duo also offers a space for Cheng, who has a rare inner ear disorder called Superior Semicircular Canal Dehiscence, to experiment musically with this hearing condition. Triggered by sounds and change of air pressure, the condition affects her hearing and balance. Often performing with loudness and vigorous energy, the musicians learn to collectively navigate this disorder but also embrace the episodes, if triggered, as a part of their improvisatory performance. In this lecture recital, the duo would perform live and follow with a conversation on what accessible performance means to them. With this project, the duo moves beyond the edge, into a space of fluidity and embodied knowledge where making sense of discourse is secondary to direct experience.

Michele Cheng and Micah Huang are multi-instrumentalists, performance artists and colleagues in the Harvard University Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry PhD program. They have collaborated on a number of projects including Multiverse, Sounding Psychedelia, the LA Hungry Ghost Festival, OTHER/WORLD, and a duo band. Their band is a cathartic musical space that combines the ethos of free music with the attitude of punk rock. This creates a liberatory aesthetic space, oriented towards spontaneity and presence in the moment; a space of fluidity and embodied knowledge in which music functions not as a product, but as a process of healing and self-discovery.

4:40-5:40: Workshop 2 (ArtsAbly)
Gaitrie Persaud-Killings – American Sign Language (ASL) Music singing workshop (In person)

Music signing is poetry and dance put together. When a Sign Language Performer signs a song, they do not translate the lyrics literally, they perform the words. It is called Vernacular Sign Language. This workshop teaches the participants how to sign a song and how to perform it, first by understanding the concept of vernacular sign language, and then to sign the lyrics. Facial expressions and body language are as important as the words themselves.

This workshop is specifically designed to enrich the knowledge of Deaf performers’ skills in music, focusing on the integration of sign language with professional musicians. Participants will engage in a comprehensive exploration of feeling music, including its theoretical foundations – such as the definitions, history and evolution of feeling music – alongside practical creativity sessions aimed at fostering innovative expressions.

Gaitrie Persaud-Killings is a Tkaronto-Guyanese, Deaf IBPOC/QIBPOC activist. A passionate Deaf music performer, Gaitrie brings her love for music to the stage through expressive, rhythmic performance that connects audiences beyond sound, empowering Deaf artists and ASL music. She is an ASL coach, an ASL music performer, and an actress (The Two Natashas, The Squeaky Wheel, Silly Paws). She is the founder of Phoenix the Fire, a dynamic theatre and film hub dedicated to supporting Deaf artists in discovering their talents. The hub also provides ASL theatre, music and film interpretation services, contributing to greater accessibility and representation in the arts.

6:00-8:00: Dinner – Mingle & Connect

Day 2

8:00-8:45: Registration

8:45: Brief welcome speech

9:00-9:30: Lecture 9
Jon Lee – The Silent Voice of East Asian Musicians in Vancouver, Canada (In person)

East Asians constitute the largest pan-ethnic group in Vancouver, Canada, comprising more than one-quarter of the city’s population; however, their musical practices, learning contexts, and cultural perspectives remain significantly underrepresented in Canadian school music curricula. Scholars have further noted that East Asian students regularly encounter oppression manifested through racial stereotypes, microaggressions, and hegemonic narratives of race, racism, and racialization within Western educational institutions. This multiple case study examines the music learning and making experiences of three East Asian immigrant musicians in Vancouver, Canada, examining how these experiences intersect with their identities related to race, ethnicity, language, and gender through the lens of Asian Critical Theory (AsianCrit). Data were collected over a 14-week period (late April to mid-July 2025) through (a) observations, (b) semi-structured interviews, and (c) on- and offline documents and artifacts. The study explores how the participants grapple with dominant narratives of race, racism, and racialization, and how they navigate their racialized musical trajectories in Vancouver. The presenter concludes by proposing inclusive pedagogical practices and offering potential strategies to affirm and empower East Asian immigrant music students within Canadian school music education.

Jonathan Sang-Joon Lee is a K-12 music educator in Vancouver, Canada and a doctoral candidate in music education at Boston University. His research interests encompass cultural diversity, popular music education, and music education within special education contexts. He has delivered clinical workshops and research presentations at various conferences across North America and Europe. As a musician specializing in popular, rock, and jazz genres, he has performed at various venues in Canada, USA, Argentina, and his home country, South Korea. He has previously released two records as a band leader.

9:30-10:00 Lecture-recital 2
Dena Kay Jones – Vision Through Sounds: The Life and Work of Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) (In person)

Blind at the age of three due to an epidemic of diphtheria that swept through his hometown, Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) survived both World Wars, the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and numerous personal challenges to become one of the most beloved composers of the twentieth century. This lecture-recital draws upon Dr. Dena Kay Jones’ expertise, research, and performance experiences centered on Rodrigo’s life and solo piano music. Set in a lecture format, the session includes scholarly research, sensory guides (photos and audio/video sound), recorded music, and—if possible—live piano performance excerpts. A select bibliography of Dr. Jones’ collected citations is provided. To deepen the experiential dimension of the session she encourages sighted participants to go “under occlusion,” offering them blindfolds to listen from a completely different perspective. The program, which has been deemed “an auditory feast,” as well as a “challenging introspective,” has altered the way people perceive themselves and others—especially in the realms of vision, sound, and embodiment. Dr. Jones also discusses how she has presented this project at two U.S. Schools for the Blind and shares insights from her ongoing research. Thereafter, audience members are encouraged to engage in dialogue, offering perspectives on how this exchange—bridging music, cultural identity, and community-based interaction between blind and sighted individuals—can be experienced even more effectively.

Dena Kay Jones has performed throughout the United States and in Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, and Canada. Highlights include recitals at El Conservatorio de Música in Chihuahua, Mexico; the I Due Archi Music and Art Club in Vasto, Italy; the Atelier Concert Series at the American Church in Paris; and the renowned Myra Hess Concert Series in Chicago. In 2023, she presented her research, Vision Through Sounds, at the Eighth International Conference on Communication at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. In 2024, she was invited to close the Festival Internacional de Música Teclística Española in Almería, Spain, featuring works by Joaquín Rodrigo. Dr. Jones has released three recordings on Centaur and Summit Records and can be heard on YouTube. A professor at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) for over twenty years, she also teaches at the annual Orfeo Summer Festival in Italy. For more information, visit: www.denakayjones.com.

10:00-10:10: Short break

10:10-10:40: Lecture 10
Michael Carter – Improvising Around and Through Ableism (In person)

As an improvising jazz musician, I have long held on to ideals of improvisation as a democratic, liberatory, inclusive, adaptive, and ethically responsive social practice (Lewis, 1996; Heble, 2000). Yet, as a disabled person who is deeply engaged with disability studies, these ideals have become increasingly tenuous. In this paper, I argue that improvised musics and jazz are complicated and often contradictory sites vis-à-vis ableism, simultaneously offering possibilities for access and agency while reproducing normative presentational and performance expectations (Lubet, 2009; Straus, 2011). Using autoethnography as a methodological frame, I situate my own lived experiences within jazz and improvised music to examine how ableist norms are negotiated, resisted, and internalized across performances, rehearsals, jam sessions, and pedagogical spaces. Autoethnography allows me to attend to the embodied, affective, and relational dimensions of ableism as they are lived and felt in musical practice (Ellis et al., 2011). I place my experiences in dialogue with disability and crip theory (McRuer, 2006; Erevelles, 2011) to ask what improvised musics and jazz demand of bodies, and whose bodies are valued. Rather than abandoning improvisation’s emancipatory ideals, this paper argues for holding them in tension. By improvising around and through ableism, I suggest that improvisation can crip time, space, and sound in ways that centre disabled ways of knowing and making music.

Michael Carter is a teacher, disability activist, and improvising musician. He earned degrees in Jazz Performance from Brandon University and University of Toronto before pursuing his education degree at York University. As a learning support teacher at the high school level in Lethbridge, Alberta, his work is rooted in supporting disabled students in their development of positive disability identities. He teaches disability studies (a course he developed in 2020), leads the jazz ensemble, and guides teacher colleagues in imagining and creating better educational futures for disabled students. Earlier in his teaching career, he spent seven years as an instrumental music teacher in Manitoba and Ontario. Michael plays saxophone regularly, and more recently, has prioritized music-making alongside other disabled musicians. Michael is currently completing a PhD in Education at the University of Lethbridge.

10:40-11:10: Lecture 11
Anne Slovin & Katherine Meizel – Disability and Accessibility in the Voice Studio: A Resource for Voice Teachers and Pedagogy Instructors (Online)

Singing is an activity that most human beings across the globe have access to as a means of expression, artistry, and community, and as operatic bass and disability advocate David Salsbery Fry points out, there is no such thing as normativity among human beings, only “radical diversity.” It is surprising, given the diversity of singing bodies worldwide, that disability is still a topic not typically addressed in pedagogical coursework, or even in published literature in the field of voice pedagogy. To fill this gap, Katherine Meizel and Anne Slovin have brought together fifteen international contributors to create Disability and Accessibility in the Voice Studio, an open access resource designed to help both emerging and experienced voice pedagogues to teach an increasingly diverse student body.

In this talk, we will briefly explore the “compulsory able-bodiedness” inherent in the roots of modern voice pedagogy before presenting our resource. This collection of essays and videos considers not only overarching concepts like internalized ableism, empathy, and wellbeing in the studio, in the rehearsal room, and onstage, but also case studies and strategies for working with students with specific disabilities and chronic illnesses. We will also offer disability-informed frameworks for voice teachers to implement with all students, including bodily autonomy, student/teacher collaboration, and universal design for learning applied to the voice studio. Our hope is that voice teachers – and indeed, all educators – will find this content beneficial in their teaching of students in all bodies, not only those with disabilities.

Anne Slovin is an Assistant Professor of Voice at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on the exclusion of disability from voice pedagogy curricula in higher education and the reciprocal pipeline between the classroom and the stage with regard to disability representation. In 2024, she was selected to attend the NATS Intern Program at FSU, under the mentorship of Melissa Foster. Dr. Slovin is also an active performer across multiple genres, with specific interests in Jewish music, French song, and musical theater. Upcoming recital performances a presentation at the International Viola Congress in Paris, France and a concert at the 2026 International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in the UK. Dr. Slovin is an alumna of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, where she received her doctorate in 2025.

Katherine Meizel is a Professor of Ethnomusicology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She holds both a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and a D.M.A. in vocal performance, and taught singing for over 20 years. Her book Multivocality: Singing on the Borders of Identity (Oxford University Press) was published in early 2020; she also co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies with Nina Sun Eidsheim (2019), and her monograph Idolized: Music, Media, and Identity in American Idol (Indiana University Press) was published in 2011. Additionally, with the nonprofit label Little Village Foundation, she co-produced the album Raise Your Voice: The Sound of Student Protest to document the 2018 protests against gun violence. Her writing has also appeared in public venues such as Slate, NPR.org, The New Republic, and The Conversation.

11:10-11:20: Short break

11:20-12:20: Workshop 3 (ArtsAbly)
Diane Kolin – New technology and adaptive instruments workshop (In person)

With the use of new technology, this workshop explores possibilities of using instruments controlled by facial expression or with limited mobility, such as wearable devices like connected gloves or digital instruments like the Adaptive Use Musical Instruments (AUMI) on tablets. We also present a variety of adaptive and adapted instruments: an adaptive instrument is an instrument that can be modified regardless of the person who is using it; an adapted instrument is an instrument built for the person who is using it. We also dive into different ways of performing, for example playing drums, piano or guitar with feet, or creating music patterns with electronic instruments like the Yamaha Tenori-on.

12:20-1:30: Lunch

1:30-2:00: Lecture 12
Sara Beth Lyons – Intersectional Navigations: Black Disabled Women, Mad Method, and Uses of Black Radical Creativity (Online)

Mad methodology and radical creativity are utilized among and across different social justice movements. Black social justice movements utilize black radical creativity and mad methodology as tools for both the articulation of marginalization and oppression, as well as a means of reclamation of harmful and racist stereotypes of madness used against the community (La Mar Jurelle Bruce, 2021). Disability justice movements have also enacted mad methodology as a tool for reclamation against ableist ideas of what a “life worth living” may look like, and several disabled artists, poets, and creatives have utilized radical creativity to articulate experiences living as a disabled person in an ableist world. Feminist scholars and creatives utilize radical creativity in storytelling as defiance against patriarchal systems of harm. In this paper, I define mad methodology and radical creativity in their fluid applications, analyze their uses in separate social justice movements, and propose theories for their intersectional uses and current practices among Black disabled women. Analyzing poems, paintings, writings, and articles published on and surrounding mad method and creativity in Black, disabled, and feminist spaces, I engage with ideas shared by social justice movements and expanded upon when used across intersectional identities. Using a feminist analysis with a disability justice lens, I suggest that uses of radical creativity are a means of liberation for Black disabled women artists and provide examples of creative output that articulate the existences of Black disabled women in racist, patriarchal, and ableist nations in North America.

Sara Beth Lyons is a first-year Masters student in the Music and Culture program at Carleton University. Hailing from Chicago, she completed her Bachelors of Music degree in Trumpet and Anthropology at the University of Iowa. Sara Beth’s research interests include generational affective trauma involving the sounds of gun violence in schools, intersectional approaches to disability justice, gendered performance in musical performance spaces, and community accessibility to arts and art research. Sara Beth is currently completing thesis work on the sounds of gun violence in American schools and generational affective trauma.

2:00-2:30: Lecture 13
Rena Roussin – Musical Constellations and Bodies that Matter: Disabled Classical Musicking in Canada and Access as Collective Care (In person)

In their 1993 monograph Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler demonstrated that hegemonic social constructions deliberately create cultures in which some bodies matter more than others. Though originating in queer theory, Butler’s insights echo across embodied privilege—and particularly resonate in discussions of ableism and accessibility. In this paper, I draw on Butler’s insights and weave together theories from disability studies, care theory, disability justice, and classical music studies to analyze the necessity of increased accessibility cultures in the classical music sector in Canada.

Specifically, I survey initiatives in Canada that foreground accessibility, including the ArtsAbly not-for-profit led by Diane Kolin, Opera Mariposa, and the rise of accessible classical music concerts. In an inversion of the paternalistic attitudes that are often projected onto people with disabilities, I argue that cripped musical communities teach essential lessons about care and access that ought to echo into classical music cultures more broadly. Musicians with disabilities exemplify William Cheng’s (2016) call to “care widely, assertively, and generously” and expressly echo Piepsna-Samaransinha’s (2022) insight that disability justice necessitates “a movement without a star system, where we all get to shine.” I ultimately contend that understanding the work of musicians with disabilities, and where and how they intersectionally practice accessibility, might lead to a stronger ethics of care in classical music in Canada. Specifically, in learning from musicians with disabilities, we might heighten a culture of musicking that builds constellations instead of a star system, and in doing so, highlight that everybody and every body matters.

Rena Roussin is a postdoctoral associate at the University of Western Ontario, and will be defending her doctoral dissertation at the University of Toronto in February 2026. She studies the historic and contemporary relationships of classical music to concepts of equity, identity, and social justice, with research specializations in late eighteenth-century Austro-German classical music and contemporary classical music in Canada. Her in-progress monograph, Positioning Contemporary Opera in Canada: Identities, Indigeneity, Intersectionalities, draws on historic and ethnographic research to examine experiences and representations of disabled, queer, and Indigenous communities in opera in Canada since 2010. Rena’s current and forthcoming publications appear with Bloomsbury, Cambridge, and Oxford University Press, and in Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music and the Journal of Musicology Pedagogy. She currently serves as musicologist-in-residence for the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, on the Canadian Opera Company’s Indigenous Circle of Artists, and as Secretary of the AMS Music and Disability Study Group.

2:30-3:00: Lecture 14
Anabel Maler – How Sign Language Analyzes Musical Form (In person)

In this talk, I reframe sign language cover songs as music analysis, arguing that Deaf listeners are expert formal analysts who use sign language to convey analytical insights into the form of existing pieces of popular music through the medium of sign language cover songs. Sign language cover songs are placed on a continuum from literal to free translations, and from descriptive to suggestive analysis. I elaborate on three analytical parameters: movement type, space, and nonmanual markers. As I have argued, these elements are some of the fundamental building blocks of musicality in sign language (2024, 10). I demonstrate how each parameter can be used to articulate aspects of musical form. I argue that sign language covers create analytical commentary on the music that should not be ignored. Reframing sign language covers as music analysis highlights the wealth of music-analytical information emerging from Deaf cultures.

Anabel Maler is a scholar of music theory with interests in music and disability studies, music in Deaf culture, music perception, embodiment and gesture, post-tonal form, and the intersections of music theory, musicology, and ethnomusicology. She is the author of the first full-length scholarly monograph on sign language music, titled Seeing Voices: Analyzing Sign Language Music (Oxford 2024). Her research has appeared in many venues, including SMT-V, Music Theory Online, Intégral, Music Perception, and the Journal of the Society for American Music. She is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of British Columbia, Canada and has previously held appointments at Indiana University and the University of Iowa.

3:00-3:10: Short break

03:10-4:10: Keynote
Pamela Witcher

Pamela E. Witcher is a multidisciplinary artist, director, mentor, interpreter, translator, cultural mediator and curator. Pamela’s artistic expertise includes visual art, videography, and signed music. Pamela overlaps old and new discoveries that have the power to change views and ideas. Pamela proclaims, “When Deaf communities create information through art and documentation, our existence becomes concrete, known and valued.” Pamela creates in numerous artistic realms; one influences the other, and art lays bare the dynamics of oppression and the strength and story of Deaf peoplehood.

Pamela’s Signed Music works have been featured on live stage at Phenomena Festival (Montréal, QC, 2022 & 2019); Les drags te font signer (Montréal, QC, 2017); Edinburgh International Book Festival (Edinburgh, Scotland, 2016); Signed Music: A Symphonious Odyssey (Towson, MD, 2015) and Par les mains pour les yeux (Montréal, QC, 2013). Pamela’s signed music video works are featured online as a medium that presents signed music from another perspective for audiences to process and appreciate. Featured signed music video clips such as I Honour You (2020); Be Kind (2020); Up and down frequency (2018); BRAVO ! (2013); and Experimental Clip (2009) can be seen on Pamela’s YouTube Channel.

4:10-4:20: Short break

4:20-5:20: Workshop 4 (ArtsAbly)
Jesse Stewart and Ellen Waterman – Sounding Inclusion: Practical Approaches to Accessible Music-Making (In person)

This interactive workshop, co-facilitated by Jesse Stewart and Ellen Waterman from Carleton University, invites participants to explore practical, embodied approaches to musical accessibility and inclusion. Drawing on exercises inspired by Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations, as well as activities that Waterman and Stewart have used in a wide variety of community contexts, the session will emphasize participation across diverse abilities, musical backgrounds, and sensory experiences.

Participants will engage with accessible musical instruments, including the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument (www.aumiapp.com), alongside low-tech and no-tech musical activities designed to support inclusive music-making. Through improvisation and collaborative sound-making, the workshop will explore ways that musical interaction can be reimagined beyond conventional performance norms and instrumental techniques. Emphasis will be placed on adaptable facilitation strategies that encourage agency and foster a sense of belonging through sound, providing practical tools for artists, educators, and researchers interested in cultivating more accessible and inclusive musical environments.

Ellen Waterman is Professor and Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada at Carleton University. Her interdisciplinary research in music and sound studies engages with improvisation, community-engaged research-creation, Deaf and disability-led music, and participatory sonic arts for social change. She is also a flutist/vocalist specializing in creative improvisation. Waterman’s books include four edited collections: Sonic Geography Imagined and Remembered; Art of Immersive Soundscapes; Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity; and as a member of the AUMI Editorial Collective, the open access book Improvising Across Abilities: Pauline Oliveros and the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument. In 2021, Waterman founded the Research Centre for Music, Sound, and Society in Canada, dedicated to exploring the complex and diverse roles that music and sonic arts play in shaping Canadian society.

Jesse Stewart is a composer, percussionist, artist, and Head of the Carleton University Music program. His music has been documented on over twenty recordings including Stretch Orchestra’s self-titled debut album, which was honoured with the 2012 “Instrumental Album of the Year” Juno award. He has been widely commissioned as a composer and artist. In 2012, he founded “We Are All Musicians” (WAAM), an organization dedicated to making music as broadly accessible as possible. Through the WAAM initiative, he has conducted hundreds of inclusive music workshops and performances. He has received numerous awards and honours including the Ottawa Arts Council’s Mid-Career Artist Award (2017) and the Ottawa Arts Council Community Arts Educator Award (2023). In 2014, he was named to the Order of Ottawa. In 2022, he was elected to the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada.

5:30-7:30: Dinner