Fiona Evison
Music Education
Office: TC 124
Email: fevison@uwo.ca
Fiona is in her fourth year of the Music Education PhD program. Her doctoral research uses Action Research in which she is a coparticipant to investigate how her theory of relational composition applies to the recovery from pandemic restrictions by singers and leaders in a community children’s choir. This study took place from March – June 2023 and resulted in the performance during the choir’s spring concert of four choral pieces collaboratively written by the choir’s leaders and choristers.
Fiona was born into a musical Scottish family who immigrated to Canada when she was a child. Music has always played an important part of her life, and she has directed and accompanied ensembles of all ages, and performed on piano, voice, flute, organ, handbells, and percussion. As a composer, she believes her creativity should be used to enable community music making. Fiona enjoys composing meaningful pieces that engage local musicians, then performing these pieces together.
Fiona’s 2019 research into the role of the composer in community music was an international project that highlighted the unique place of composers in this field. She has a forthcoming chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Community Singing on this study, as well as related publications in the ICCM Transform Journal (on positionality), the Canadian Music Educator (on composer dispositions), Religions (on spirituality and composition) and a chapter in Routledge’s The Responsibilities of Performing Arts in Tertiary Education (on composition pedagogy in higher education). Her doctoral research combines her composition research with additional investigations on the impact of COVID-19 on community music leaders and participants. Fiona has presented papers and been interviewed on this topic internationally, and she writes about it in the Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education, the Journal of Popular Music Education, and forthcoming publication from Routledge Press’s Congregational Music Studies book series.
Fiona holds a Master of Arts in Community Music (Wilfrid Laurier University), and a Bachelor of Church Music (Heritage College). In addition to being an active community musician, she is a member of the Royal Canadian College of Organists, serving on the Grey Bruce RCCO executive, and she is also a church music director, and accompanist and conductor for two community choirs. Fiona is also on the board of the Association of Canadian Women Composers, and is Editor for the ACWC Journal.
Additionally, Fiona currently holds positions on the Western University Taskforce on Academic Integrity as the Faculty of Music Graduate Student Representative, and is Secretary for the Health and Safety Committee of the Teaching Assistants' and Postdoctoral Associates' Union. She has served on Western’s Faculty of Music Strategic Planning Subcommittee, the Society of Graduate Students’ Executive as Music Lunchtime Research Forum Coordinator, and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (Canada) 2021 and National Coalition for Music Education Symposium 2022 conference teams.
Fiona is a recipient of the MayDay Group 2022 Early Careers Bursary, the Pratt Green Trust Bursary, and the 2022 First Place winner of the Canadian Music Educators' Association Dr. Frankin Churchley Graduate Essay Competition.
