MUSIC
 |
I meet music teacher and composer Jane Naylor hot off a demonstration protesting cuts to classical music programming on CBC Radio 2. “There are so many streams of music. Why cut off one stream of it?” she asks, incredulous. “Kids get up in the morning, get on the bus, and they are bombarded with pop music. But there are many, many beautiful and accessible works of art from the past. Kids need a chance to get turned on to it.”
“The pop music of today is still dependent on the broad range of classical music of the past. The harmony!” She smiles as she folds her hands and bows her head, “Thank you, Bach!”
Jane’s interest stems partly from her vocation as a music teacher and volunteer work as President of the PEI Registered Music Teachers’ Association, but also from her experience of listening. “When I was young, I very seldom ever heard classical music in my home. My father sang and played guitar, and we would scrub the floor, on our knees, singing harmony. We would do the dishes, side by side, singing harmony,” she recalls.
She first heard classical music in radio broadcasts played to schools. Hearing Beethoven, she remembers, “I couldn’t understand how someone could be deaf and write music.” Her curiosity piqued, she bought $1.98 recordings of two symphonies. “The intense feelings of listening to those things—,” she says, “I never looked back.”
Despite her love of music, Jane first trained and worked in biology—but when she moved to PEI she couldn’t find a job in her field. Fatefully, one keyboard led to another. “Eight lessons in typing allowed me to get a job at UPEI,” she says. Work as a stenographer led, eventually, to a permanent post in the university library. As a university staffer, she had the option to take some courses at no charge, and over time, while working and raising her family, Jane completed her Bachelor of Music and music teaching certification. “I’m forever grateful to UPEI,” she says. “I’ve been able to use everything that I learned—and pass it on.”
Using what she has learned has included composing her own pieces. A recent composition, “Bald!” premiered in April at UPEI music student Jacques Arsenault’s senior recital. Jane rose to the challenge of composing a piece for a baritone voice with tuba accompaniment (by student Genevieve Mullally). Jane describes her compositions as “accessible,” because for her, music “has to have meaning. It has to translate to something else.” “Bald!” took its inspiration from the performers’ gesture of shaving their heads in support of a friend’s mother, who was fighting cancer.
Jane bemoans the anticipated loss of CBC Radio 2 as a prime commissioner and broadcaster of new music, including some of her own past works. “Canadian music stands up very well internationally,” she says. “Many women and men are coming along as recognized composers. And, yes, women are getting more of a voice, but we still have a long way to go. A lot of new music is mathematical or electronics-based, and most of us women (I think) are more attracted to the things of the heart, that speak to the heart.”
The PEI Registered Music Teachers’ Association is a strong promoter of PEI students’ excellence in performance and composition. The Association supports prizes in composition, in addition to prizes for music festival performances “We ask them to tell a story in music. It produces some great results!” she says. One student, she relates, used a keyboard as a soccer field, to tell the story of a soccer game.
Jane Naylor says the CBC doesn’t know the talent it will be missing in coming years. “In letters to the CBC, people across the country are writing how they came to love classical music. Most started by hearing a piece that they liked,” she says. In her case, listening led to more listening, to lessons, then to a music degree, teaching, composing, and encouraging other music teachers. All that from one broadcast of Beethoven.
To find out more about the PEI Registered Music Teachers’ Association and their wide range of projects, socials, and professional development opportunities, visit their website at www.peirmta.ca