Happy World Music Day!
To mark World Music Day, we had the pleasure of having a SAHA Conversation with Dr Emily Doolittle, a composer, zoomusicologist, and Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Canadian-born, Scotland-based composer Dr Doolittle grew up in Halifax Nova Scotia and was educated at Dalhousie University, the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague, Indiana University and Princeton University. From 2008-2015 she was Assistant/Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Cornish College of the Arts. She is currently an Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Dr Doolittle was awarded a 2016 Opera America Discovery Grant, as well as funding from the Hinrichsen Foundation and the Canada Council of the Arts, for the development of her chamber opera Jan Tait and the Bear, which was premiered by Ensemble Thing, with Alan McHugh, Catherine Backhouse, and Brian McBride, conducted by Tom Butler and directed by Stasi Schaeffer, at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow. Jan Tait and the Bear received further funding from Creative Scotland, the Hope Scott Foundation, and an RCS Athenaeum Award for performance in the Made in Scotland Showcase at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Doolittle is currently collaborating with Greenlight Creative to create an animated video of Jan Tait and the Bear with funding from an RCS Knowledge Exchange grant.
Among her many achievements, Dr Doolittle has written for such ensembles as the Vancouver Symphony, Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal), Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (Toronto), Symphony Nova Scotia, the Vancouver Island Symphony, Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, the Kapten Trio, the Motion Ensemble and Paragon, and such soloists as sopranos Suzie LeBlanc, Janice Jackson, Patricia Green and Helen Pridmore, pianist Rachel Iwaasa, violinist Annette-Barbara Vogel, viola d’amorist Thomas Georgi and viola da gambist Karin Preslmayr.
In this episode, Dr Doolittle will help us understand the term “zoomusicology”, Jan Tait and the Bear (a 15th-century folktale from the Shetlandic Isle of Fetlar) and so much more.
The episode is also available on Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts.
You can find more information on Jan Tait and the Bear here
Visit rcs.ac.uk from more information on The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
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