Jeremy Cox named Schulich Distinguished Visiting Chair

Jeremy Cox has been named 2016-2017 Schulich Distinguished Visiting Chair in Music. He brings to the school an expertise that spans performance, scholarship, teaching, academic leadership, and curriculum design.  Prof. Cox will be involved in many aspects of school life this year, including teaching, conference organization, academic review, and writing.

As Schulich Distinguished Visiting Chair, Prof. Cox will be directing a graduate seminar open to both performance and research students entitled ‘Pierrot in Modern Guises: the commedia dell’arte, théâtre forain, puppet theatre and cabaret as energising forces in modernist musical works’. He has been long fascinated by the ways in which Modernism drew some of its innovative energy from looking outside the conventions of high art, blurring the distinctions between the popular and the refined, tapping into the vigour of non-formal artistic traditions and often exploring this exciting terrain through hybrid genres that mixed different art-forms in novel ways.   “Offering this seminar gives me a chance to share my fascination and to explore with students a wonderfully rich and diverse repertoire that, for a period in the early C20th, was right at the cutting edge of what it meant to be new in music and the other arts.  As well as studying it, my hope is that we shall also engage with it creatively, through performances, adaptations and perhaps even fresh compositional responses.” (Jeremy Cox)

While at the Schulich School of Music, Prof. Cox will also be leading the organisation of an international study-day linked to the conference 'Artistic Migration and Identity: Paris 1870-1940’ and designed to mark the centenary of the first coining of the term ‘Surrealism’ by examining the role played by music in this artistic movement over the last 100 years.   The conference, which is in collaboration with the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, the Observatoire Interdisciplinaire de Création et de Recherche en Musique (OICRM) and the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI) is organized by Steven Huebner and Federico Lazzaro, and will take place from April 27-29, 2017.

In addition, Prof. Cox will also be working on his new book entitled ‘Poulenc, Apollinaire and the Mélodie in the Age of Modernity’, due for completion in 2017.  Prof. Cox received his DPhil from Oxford University in 1986, and his thesis on the mélodies of Francis Poulenc sparked a lifelong passion for this repertoire. Finally, during his stay at Schulich, he will be advising academic administration throughout the year as they work through the processes of cyclical review of the performance and research departments. 

“The Schulich School of Music has a proud history of international engagement, not least through its associate membership of the European Association of Conservatoires.  Thanks to this link, I have had the privilege of working with successive deans of the School on a number of European projects over several years.  It was therefore with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation to reverse this 'migration' and come to work with colleagues in Montreal.   I look forward to continuing and deepening my relationship with the School and to the many areas in which I hope I can both contribute and learn over the course of the coming academic year.” (Jeremy Cox)