Classical music provides lens for Vietnam War

Emily Abrams Ansari may be an award-winning scholar, but the Don Wright Faculty of Music professor readily admits there are still things her students can teach her – and one of those things led to a Petro Canada Young Innovators Award.

The idea started with "a brilliant presentation" Music History PhD student April Morris delivered to Ansari’s Musical Americanism course last semester. Morris examined The Face of War, a little-known work by the American composer Elie Siegmeister which expressed his opposition to the Vietnam War.

"She made me realize how little has been written about U.S. classical composers’ musical responses to Vietnam," she said, adding such pieces could help her extend one of the central ideas explored in her forthcoming book, The Sound of a Superpower: Musical Americanism and the Cold War.

Read full article (Western News, June 22, 2017)

Related links

Assistant Professor Emily Abrams Ansari - biography

April Morris - PhD student - biography

About the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Awards - Western and Robarts

Music Research and Composition Department - Don Wright Faculty of Music