Field Notes

ECM Field Notes Archive

Jan. 5, 2026. Hey, look! 2025 is now behind us地nd we made it! In addition to our individual trials and triumphs (hopefully you saw more of the latter), many of us also struggled with what my husband likes to call, General existential doom and gloom: anxiety about the state of our world and what we as artists, as educators, as citizens can do about it...

Oct. 31, 2025. When I last posted an edition of Field Notes, I was wrapping up my final semester as Director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music at CU-Boulder. Contrary to the belief of countless friends and colleagues who didnt read their email carefully, I was not retiring altogether...

May 19, 2025. Wait you have an eclipse on your Birthday?? We were sitting on the porch off the main hall at MacDowell, in Peterborough, NH, chatting after dinner, and one of the other Fellows a Chinese-American poet, and also a dedicated astrologer was reviewing my natal chart. It was October 14, 2023, the date of an annular solar eclipse. It was also my 59th Birthday...

March 19, 2025. Ive been waffling about the topic for this latest edition of Field Notes. Should I observe the 5-year anniversary of the Covid lockdown by reflecting on things artists and arts organizations learned地nd opportunities we missed? (Nah: arent we all tired of talking about the pandemic??) Perhaps I should use recent conversations in my corner of academia to once again get on my soapbox regarding the importance of interdisciplinary teaching and research...

December 3, 2024. I realize I'm biased when I say this, but my husband is pretty amazing. Take for instance the work he does as Asst. Vice President for Community Relations at Premier Members Credit Union, here in Colorado, where he oversees the credit union's many sponsorship arrangements with local non-profits as well as programs in sustainability, corporate and social responsibility, and more. But I'm not posting here to brag about him (though I'm happy to do that). Today I want to look at a specific program that he's created that is truly innovative, and should serve as a model for arts organizations looking to expand programming and garner more corporate sponsorship...

November 21, 2024. Earlier this week I woke up in a bad space. Im talking, I cant bear facing the world kind of bad space. The feeling was probably made worse by the fact that Ive been fighting some weird cold, one that oscillates between feeling okay but a little washed out and crashing headfirst into oblivion...

November 16, 2023.泭Im just off a three week residency at MacDowell, and it was nothing short of transformational. As I post this its exactly one month since I left, yet part of me remains in that magical place. The process of transitioning from leaving part of myself behind at MacDowell to bringing MacDowell back with me into my daily life is ongoing...and complex. So this is an unusual Field Notes...

April 25, 2023. On April 12, we here at The 勛圖厙 of Colorado-Boulder had our New Venture Challenge Championships, the culminating event in a year-long initiative to support entrepreneurship on campus...

January 24, 2023.泭A month or so ago I posted the first part of two-part edition of Field Notes in which I began contemplating whats next for the performing arts industry...

November 15, 2022.泭The other day I read the latest research on the effects of the Chicxulub asteroid that crashed into Earth approx. 66 million years ago...

October 11, 2021.泭Two weeks ago the CU-Boulder College of Music officially opened its new wing to the Warner Imig Music Building, a 50,000 square-foot addition that houses rehearsal spaces, studios, classrooms, a wellness studio...

May 18, 2021. It was 1:00 am and my body did not appreciate the chiming of my alarm waking me up out of a deep sleep...

February, 23泭2021. A critical component of our nations recovery from the pandemic both economically and socially will be to fund a significant bail-out of our arts and culture industries...

January 16, 2021.泭In 2008, the Federal government deemed an $83 billion bailout of the automotive industry essential to stabilizing an economy in freefall. And they were right: the plan...

"I honestly don't know how we come out of this. If I were a student again I'd be leaving music school to do something else." My colleague sighed, a look of utter defeat on her face. "What do I tell these kids about their future?"泭I didn't have a good answer for her...

October 27, 2020.泭The spring semester was to have seen us launch the first-ever Lullaby Project in a collegiate setting. (You can learn more about the Lullaby Project and its history泭.) In partnership with the Crown Wellness Institute here at CU we would...

Feb. 11, 2020.泭Say the word team to me and the first thing Im likely to think of is getting picked last in gym class when teams were being chosen, and inevitably hearing a whining sigh along the lines of, Oh [expletive]! Not泭Nytch. This would usually be followed by my justifying their disappointment...

January 15, 2020. After a lovely Winter Break I was kicking off the New Year with a trip to a conference I hadnt been to in a while, the annual meeting of The United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE), North Americas leading organization for entrepreneurship in higher education. Id had two presentations accepted and was...

December 3, 2019.泭Two weeks back the ECM sponsored an event called Nour█sh, a local installment of a nationwide initiative to find common ground among disparate groups and build community through humanitys two great unifiers: music and food. The brainchild of my colleague...

November 12, 2019.泭Back in October I had the privilege of hosting Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble (PNME) for a joint residency at the CU College of Music and Boulders Dairy Arts Center. There were many reasons why one would want to host this group. For starters, PNME is the oldest continuously-operating professional new music ensemble in the country, having premiered over 300 new works by...

October 12, 2019.泭Greetings and welcome to a new publication from the Entrepreneurship Center for Music at CU-Boulder! For some time Ive been wondering about how best to communicate not just the activities of the ECM, our students, and our graduates, but also to discuss issues in the field of arts entrepreneurship education, the Boulder entrepreneurial ecosystem, and my...