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Gadjha Mada University
February 12, 2014
February 12, 2014
February 3, 2014
Conductor/pianist Jimmy Chiang has been appointed resident conductor of the famed Vienna Boys’ Choir. Chiang received a Sylff fellowship in 2005 while attending the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where he studied orchestral conducting, chorus conducting, and piano.
His conducting breakthrough came with his winning the first prize at the renowned Lovro von Matacic International Competition for Young Conductors in 2007. He has since performed on the most distinguished stages all over the world. Chiang has also participated in charity concerts involving Sylff fellows at the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
Our sincerest congratulations to Jimmy Chiang on his new appointment!
To learn more, see: www.jimmychiang.com
January 31, 2014
January 31, 2014
January 30, 2014
January 9, 2014
December 31, 2013
By 19641
How does stroke affect the activities of a musician? Meta Weiss, a cellist and Sylff fellow at The Juilliard School, used an SRA award to conduct research in Moscow about the life and music of Soviet composer Vissarion Shebalin, who lost his linguistic abilities after the second of two severe strokes. By studying Shebalin’s journals and sketchbooks, Weiss gained new insights into the changes in Shebalin’s compositional style after each stroke, which could have broad implications for our understanding of the functioning of the human brain.
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Vissarion Yakevlevich Shebalin was born in 1904 in Omsk, Siberia. He lived in the Soviet Union until his death in 1963 and spent his entire professional life in Moscow. He began his musical studies in Omsk with Mikhail I. Nevitov before transferring to the Peter I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow under the tutelage of Nikolai Myaskovsky. Those who knew him always admired his work ethic, modesty, organization, and innate ability as a composer. After completing his studies at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, he taught there as a professor and eventually became its director, a position which he held from 1942 to 1948.
The year 1948 was a stressful time for all Soviet composers, and Shebalin was no exception. He was accused of formalism and stripped of his position in the Composer’s Union as well as at the Conservatory. Many of his family members believe that the first stroke that he suffered in 1953 was as a result of the many political stresses of the time. He was able to make an almost complete recovery following the stroke in 1953, with the exception of the lingering paralysis of his right arm and leg. He relearned how to write with his left hand, and continued to compose as well as teach. As a teacher, he remained extremely devoted to his students, even during his prolonged illness.
In 1959, he suffered a second stroke that resulted in aphasia. This was especially tragic because of his strong literary background and upbringing; before the strokes he was fluent not only in Russian, but also German, French, Latin and a bit of English. He worked with a team of linguists, neuropsychologists, and doctors to regain the Russian language, and although he was limited in his physical activities by his doctors, he set aside time every day to compose and keep a journal of his activities (with the help of his devoted wife, Alisa Maximovna Shebalina).
By virtue of the fact that Shebalin was a Soviet composer—and he deliberately did not do any self-promotion despite his reputation within the Soviet Union as a leading composer and composition teacher—his music and name essentially died with him in 1963. There is almost no literature on him that is published in English, and when his name does come up in music history articles, it is only in conjunction with the political events of 1948. Shebalin, however, has intrigued the neuroscience community for many years since his case was reported by Drs. Luria, Futer, and Svetkova in the 1960s.
My dissertation will be the first paper in any language to discuss Shebalin’s music through the lens of his medical condition. My aim is to analyze Shebalin’s music, focusing on his string quartets, both pre- and post-aphasia, in order to discover a link, if any, between Shebalin’s loss of verbal language and a change in compositional language. I am collaborating with Dr. Aniruddh Patel at Tufts University, a neuroscientist whose research focuses on music and language. While there have been other (better known) composers who suffered brain injuries, Shebalin is unique in that his condition was characterized by an almost complete loss of verbal language, and we can, based on his sketchbooks, create a fairly accurate timeline of his compositions as well as view the changes in his compositional process. This is inferred by studying the different motivic units Shebalin was constantly writing in his sketchbooks, as well as the more obvious indicators, such as handwriting (left vs. right) and pen color. The string quartets were chosen because they span the creative output of the composer from all periods of his life, and Shebalin himself said that they were the compositions he was most proud of and represented him the best.
After receiving my SRA grant, I traveled to Moscow for the month of October on a student visa and enrolled in the post-graduate program of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. After exhaustive research working with a Russian-English translator, I was able to track down the location of all of the archival materials on Shebalin, and I was fortunate enough to obtain access to everything that was relevant to my research. This included the RGALI State Archive, the Glinka Museum Archive, and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory Archive and Reading Room.
Additionally, I was also able, using the Russian “vKontakte” social networking site, to locate the Shebalin family. They granted me permission to visit Shebalin’s summer estate, interview his surviving family members, family friends, former students, and doctors. Two of the three therapists/neuropsychologists who helped Shebalin with his linguistic rehabilitation following his second stroke had already passed away. Again using vKontakte, I reached out to Dr. L.S. Svetkova, the only living team member who treated Shebalin during his rehabilitation, and she agreed to send me her detailed notes and records that she kept while he was her patient.
The highlight of my research was the sketchbooks that are housed in the RGALI State Archive. Shebalin worked quickly and methodically, and was constantly scrutinizing his work. His sketchbooks proved to be much more revealing than any of the manuscripts or other scores. Unlike the detailed journals kept by both Shebalin and his wife, the sketchbooks are unbiased. They show his compositional process neatly and efficiently. Also, because his right side was paralyzed following the first stroke, one can clearly see the change from writing with his right hand to writing with his left hand. They also reveal that after both strokes, he did not simply go back to older works and revise them but he also created completely new and different works.
Shebalin’s music changed in several ways post-stroke. There are distinct differences in the structure of the themes, the imagery of the music, and the scale of his compositions. After his second stroke, he also experimented with a pseudo-twelve-tone style, though still within the tonal idiom, writing themes that featured all twelve tones melodically but relied on the functional harmony of tonality. Perhaps counterintuitively, his music was full of optimism following the onset of his aphasia, and, like his music before the strokes, the music was very clean and straightforward, but with new richness and depth despite the economy of means.
With Shebalin's great-granddaughter and great-great-granddaughter, outside the Shebalin Music School in Moscow
Upon further analysis, it is anticipated that although it will be relatively easy to differentiate the pre- and post-aphasia musical traits, it will be difficult to attribute an exact cause-effect relationship between the change in compositional language and loss of verbal language for two reasons.
First, despite the fact that both Shebalin and his close family and friends—many of whom were interviewed in the course of this research—deny that he ever buckled to political pressure, it will be difficult to definitively separate changes in his music due to political pressure and those due to his medical condition or changing musical taste. The second reason is that because of Shebalin’s fragile physical state following the strokes, he was easily fatigued and thus limited to composing only a few hours a day by his medical doctors. Preliminary analysis reveals that his musical style is markedly more succinct following the strokes, though this may be a result of the doctor’s restrictions.
Through the research conducted with the SRA grant, I was able to construct a complete picture of Shebalin and his compositional output. The future implications of this research are twofold. First, and perhaps most importantly, it would provide hope for stroke victims that in spite of the odds, Shebalin was able to continue to create music and express himself through his most beloved medium—composition. Second, by analyzing his music both pre- and post-aphasia, it may reveal certain processes or elements that are shared by both music and language that remain intact despite the loss of language (such as syntax and grammar).
In this way, my research may help future stroke victims to recover certain aspects of language and aid in our understanding of the brain and mind, a subject with implications far beyond just music or Shebalin.
December 24, 2013
By 19596
Jadavpur University is located in Kolkata, the former capital of India and the religiously and ethnically diverse cultural center of the Bengal region. The city has a rich and active local tradition in the arts, including drama, art, film, theatre, and literature. That tradition was alive and well at the tenth anniversary celebration of the Sylff program at the University, which featured a documentary film, a special edition newsletter, and a lively debate.
The Jadavpur University Sylff Association organized a full day of events under the theme of “Leadership and Governance.” India is still searching for a perfect model of governance, as leadership often cannot be fully exercised for want of institutional support.
For the members of the association, preparing for this big event provided valuable lessons in leadership, public communication, and collaboration. Two young fellows who played a central role in organizing the event share their thoughts below.
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When I became a PhD-level Sylff fellow in July 2012, Professor Joyashree Roy, the Project Director for JU-SYLFF, told me that I would have to take up a major role in the proposed Tenth Anniversary Celebration of the Sylff Program in Jadavpur University. A few months into my tenure as a Sylff fellow, I was made the principal organizer of the JU-SYLFF Association, and I knew straightaway that I had a lot of hard work ahead of me.
My worries were mitigated by the presence of a team of very committed colleagues eager to work together, people whom I have known for a long time as students at the University. Now, when I look back at those days that were filled equally with anxiety and enthusiasm, it becomes evident how every Sylff fellow—from the senior-most fellows who joined in 2003 to the newly selected batch of 2013—did their best to make the event a success.
I still remember sending the first e-mail, back in October 2012, asking the Sylff fellows to come for a meeting where we were to discuss how we would go about organizing the major event. The fellows responded enthusiastically by turning up in large numbers. It was the first in a series of meetings that were held during the course of the preparations.
We decided that, in order to organize an event of this magnitude, we would have to take up a lot of responsibilities, including raising funds to cover the event’s expenses. Our target was to showcase the various activities and both the academic and non-academic achievements of the association and the fellows, as well as making the JU-SYLFF Program more visible within and outside the University.
We were helped immensely by our Project Director, Professor Roy, and Sylff assistants Sayanti Mitra (who left shortly before the event) and Samrat Roy (who replaced her). Suman Datta, who has been associated with the JU-SYLFF Program for a long time and remains irreplaceable, was always there whenever we needed his help and advice. The association also received generous support from members of the University administration, who cooperated with us in every way possible, thus making the celebration a truly collaborative event.
The Sylff Program requires that the fellows reach beyond their academic duties and fulfill various other roles as socially responsible leaders. One major benefit of this schooling is that it teaches the fellows the very useful skills of multitasking and rising beyond personal likes and dislikes for the benefit of a common cause. In taking up multiple duties, for instance, students of history and philosophy found the hidden designer in them; and those studying the intricacies of economics found themselves practicing the fine art of letter writing and selecting the perfect menu for lunch.
Being the principal organizer of the JU-SYLFF Association, I had to take up multiple duties as well: With Nikhilesh Bhattacharya and Sreerupa Sengupta, I co-edited the tenth anniversary edition of our annual newsletter, Fellows, and with the latter, I co-directed a short documentary titled, JU-SYLFF: The Journey So Far, detailing the decade-long journey of the Sylff Program at Jadavpur University. The documentary, which was shown on the day of the celebration, was conceptualized as an exciting and unconventional way of preserving the story of the wonderful partnership that the University and the Sylff Program have formed (click here to view the video). We tried our best to cover the entire history of the program—from the award ceremony at the Rajbhavan (Governor’s House) in 2003, through the formation of the JU-SYLFF Association and its various social and academic activities, to the present state of the program and what the fellows have gained by being a part of this community.
Former Vice-Chancellor of JU, Professor Ashoke Nath Basu, told us in the interview that was used as the introductory speech for the documentary how the introduction of the Sylff Program has helped the University to carry out cutting-edge research in interdisciplinary areas. The then Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Souvik Bhattacharyya, told us in his interview how he saw this wonderful partnership blossoming into a very profitable association in near future. By telling the story of our long and highly valued ties with philanthropic organizations such as the Premananda Memorial Leprosy Mission Hospital, we tried to show how the JU-SYLFF Association is trying its best to reach beyond the ivory tower and take part in social action programs. Duke Ghosh, one of the earliest Sylff fellows who did the voice-over for the documentary, re-collected the occasion when the University had the honour of hosting the South-Asia Pacific Regional Forum in 2007.
Despite our best efforts, though, we did feel the pressure during the final days of the preparations: There were sleepless nights as we tried very hard to tie up all the loose ends. In the end, however, we found that everything can come together when likeminded and determined people stick together. We received a lot of help from people who had little to do, directly, with the Sylff community previously. This, for me, was the highlight of the event, as it showed the bonding that the Sylff network has created within the University community. The Jadavpur University Press lent its expertise in designing the special edition of the annual newsletter. Researchers from the School of Women’s Studies gave us technical advice on creating the documentary. Ramprasad Gain, a former student of film studies at Jadavpur University and now an editor in the Bengali film industry, spent sleepless nights with us during the last few days editing and making last minute changes to the documentary.
There were moments of frustration and fear. During the last days of the preparations, the project director was travelling and there were times when we did feel that we had bitten off more than we could chew. But we also understood very quickly that these were part and parcel of preparing for any event of this magnitude. The key was not to lose focus: We had to be perfect in everything, since we were to host a lot of very important people on that day. In these moments of anxiety, the senior fellows took charge and provided guidance for the younger ones. Now, when I look back at the day of the event when everything proceeded perfectly, I think that those days of endless pressure were worth going through.
My stint as a JU-SYLFF fellow began in a whirr of activity. When I was selected for the fellowship program I had no idea I was going to be thrown in at the deep end. As it happened, I joined in August 2013, less than two months before the tenth anniversary celebration of the Sylff Program in Jadavpur University. By then, preparations for the big day had already entered the final phase.
JU-SYLFF fellows had the responsibility of planning, organizing, and partly funding the day-long event on September 24, 2013. It meant a lot of work for all of us. And we had to balance that work with our academic responsibilities because the celebration was being held mid-term.
The first rule was good teamwork. Without it we could never hope to execute the diverse tasks facing us. This was, in a sense, a refreshing departure from academic research, which at times can be a rather lonely pursuit. Hours spent reading a book in the far corner of a library, poring over manuscripts in a desolate archive, or writing a thesis in a closed room ignoring the revelry outside bring their own reward. But team dynamics, too, is a fascinating subject: How the chain of command functions; how team members react to responsibilities; and how friendships are forged and occasional differences resolved (or not!).
On this occasion, the team’s task was made difficult by the fact that Joyashree Roy, the JU-SYLFF Project Director, was travelling extensively in the lead up to the celebration. That meant we were effectively left without a unanimously accepted leader for much of the time. The academic community of Jadavpur University is fiercely egalitarian and establishing a command chain with a temporary head was always going to be tricky. The core team was also small because most of the former JU-SYLFF fellows no longer live in Kolkata but are based in different places across the world.
This is where the former fellows who were still in the city played a crucial role. While all fellows, past and present, contributed to the program fund, Sreerupa Sengupta, Duke Ghosh, Rimple Mehta, Anindita Roy, Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Deeptanil Ray, Nilanjan Pande, Sebanti Chatterjee, Abhishek Basu, and Payoshni Mitra took time off from their busy schedules to take charge of the preparations. We also got help from the administrators, teachers, and members of the university’s non-teaching staff whenever we asked.
I had the cushy job of coordinating among the fellows, which allowed me to order them around, lend a helping shoulder when someone was down, and, once or twice, order boxes of pizzas and pass them off as working lunch. My other responsibility was to put together the special edition of the JU-SYLFF Association’s newsletter, Fellows.
On the day of the event I could not follow the proceedings in the first session because most of my morning was spent making frequent trips backstage with instructions and ensuring everyone connected with the program had lunch. In between I was briefly on stage with Mr. Yohei Sasakawa, chairman of the Nippon Foundation, and the editorial team of Fellows for the launch of the special edition. The warm smile on Mr. Sasakawa’s face reassured me that things were going well.
The last session saw a lively debate. The motion of the house was “Leadership is more important than governance,” and each debater could choose whether to speak for or against it. We settled on the subject because it is extremely relevant in a developing country such as India, where the search for a perfect model of governance is still on, and leadership often cannot fulfill its potential for want of institutional support. Two factors were kept in mind in choosing the participants: moderator Sugata Marjit and debaters Prasad Ranjan Roy, Supriya Chaudhuri, Anup Sinha, and Anchita Ghatak. One was that all be leaders in their respective fields, ranging from the Indian administrative service, academics, business administration. and women’s rights. And the other was that they be involved in governance in one way or the other. Some have been associated, directly or indirectly, with the JU-SYLFF Program for a long time. The debate taught us that good governance must lay the foundation for leadership to flourish.
What else did I learn from the experience of being part of a team tasked with planning and organizing an event of such scale? I learnt a new skill: I can now work with the design software used to make the layout of the newsletter. I learnt to keep calm, or at least appear so, when things were seemingly going haywire. And I learnt that the job is not done until the last payment has been made and accounts settled, which can be many days after the event is over.
More importantly, I learnt there is nothing more fun than taking collective ownership of an event and being able to stage it without a hitch. I couldn’t have had a better initiation into the larger Sylff family spread across the world.
Read related Sylff News article here.
December 18, 2013
The Tokyo Foundation announced the re-launch of “Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI)” and “Sylff Fellows Forum for Global Dialogue” (starting in 2015). Four fellows were selected as SLI recipients, and the report of the first recipient's seminar can be read here. In addition, 22 Sylff Research Abroad awardees were named in 2013. All awardees and the reports (by fiscal year) can be read here. We look forward to receiving your applications in 2014!
The University of Athens celebrated the 20th anniversary and Jadavpur University celebrated “10 Glorious Years” of their respective Sylff programs in 2013.
Many Sylff fellows sent news of their activities: Jory Vinikour was nominated for a Grammy Award; a Sylff Chamber Music Seminar Concert was held in Vienna; Julia Zulus participated in Rainbow 21 International Suntory Hall Debut Concert in Tokyo; Jordan Matsudaira was appointed senior economist in the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) for US President Barack Obama; Bryan Matthew Thompson delivered a presentation at the Third International Conference on Government Performance Management and Leadership at Waseda University in Tokyo; Itamar Zorman made his recital debut in Tokyo; and the Ateneo de Manila University has made a call for donations and a relief campaign is being promoted by Sherilyn Siy Tan for victims of Typhoon Haiyan. The Tokyo Foundation offers its deepest condolences to the people in the Philippines over the devastating loss of life and property from this super typhoon.
We were delighted to welcome many members of the Sylff community to our office in Tokyo this year. On July 10, the Tokyo Foundation hosted the first-ever gathering of Sylff fellows and SSC members at our office; 20 Sylff fellows and SSC members attended the gathering. Articles detailing the visits can be accessed by clicking on the names/links below. We hope to welcome many more visitors in 2014, so please be sure to contact us when you have plans to visit Tokyo!
Ilona Dubra (Sylff fellow, University of Latvia), Warren Ang (Sylff fellow, INSEAD), David Panzl (assistant professor, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna), Liu Yajun (Sylff fellow, Nanjing University), Masaaki Higashijima,(Sylff fellow, Waseda University), Yuki Kakiuchi (conductor), Takehiro Kurosaki (deputy director, Pacific Islands Centre).
In December 2014, the Tokyo Foundation will host the Sylff Administrators Meeting in Tokyo. Details will be announced shortly.
Wishing You Peace and Joy in the New Year!
(on the back row from left to right) Tomoko, Takashi Suzuki(Director), Akiko
(on the middle row) Eriko, Tetsuya
(on the front row) Yumi, Yoko, Keita, Mari Suzuki(Director)