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Seasons Greetings 2020



Clearly typeset modern edition:


Original first edition of 1737:




Kathleen Schoen




Land Acknowledgement

by kschoen 0 Comments

I presently make my home on Treaty 6 territory, land which has been occupied by many indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

As the descendant of refugees and the daughter of a military family that lived in many different places all over the world, I do not have a deep connection to this place that goes back many generations. I am grateful for the environment here that has allowed my roots to grow and create a secure space for making art and relationships. My work here will continue to reflect the principles of tatawaw*, and make a place for others the same way that a place was opened for me. 

My first approach to the concept of land acknowledgement was through the study of music history and the performance of early music on period instruments. The field of early music performance is very focused on European culture, and I began to wonder what early music would look like from a Canadian perspective. This led to much research in history, and I realized that any performance of period music from the land now known as Canada would have to include the music of the people who resided here before European contact. 

This led to experimental compositions and arrangements which presented Métis fiddle tunes beside the Indigenous, French, and Scots music that influenced them. 

I developed a concept of an “archaeological” approach to creating site specific musical performances. This would begin with the natural sounds of the land itself, and then add layers of music and sound that would reflect the subsequent waves of human activity in the area. With the Schoen Duo, we received a grant from the Edmonton Heritage and Edmonton Arts Councils to create a performance based on the heritage of the River Crossing are of Edmonton, where the original Fort Edmonton was located. 

While developing this project, we had the opportunity to collaborate with the Mountain Soul Singers. They provided traditional drum song for the River Crossing Soundscape project, and shared drum teachings with us.

After the River Crossing Soundscape was completed, I had an opportunity to present at the Open Recorder Days teacher’s conference in Amsterdam. It was very interesting to return to Europe (I had lived in Germany as a child) after doing all this work thinking about relationships to the land. I experimented with the idea of doing a land acknowledgment before my presentation, since I had by this point become very used to doing this before important events. This led me into thinking deeply about family history (my ancestors were anabaptist refugees from religious prosecution in Holland in the 16th C) and the concept of indigeneity (my audience in Holland was indigenous to the land on which the event was taking place – this is not the case with my usual North American white settler audience). 

At this point, we were all confronted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The closure of our usual performance venues made me realize that the concept of site-specific performances that incorporate the sounds of the land on that site could translate equally well into outdoor performances and online performance as music videos. My creative work pivoted in this direction. 

More recently, I had the pleasure of participating in a Land Acknowledgement development workshop with Jocelyn and Hunter Cardinal of naheyawin. Their workshop emphasized exploring your personal relationship to the land, so that you could have a personal land acknowledgement alongside the land acknowledgment of your organization. I am grateful to them for the tatawaw teaching, and their emphasis on how developing your personal land acknowledgment is an ongoing process. They also inspired me with stories of other performing artists who incorporated the land acknowledgement into their art form. 

This made me realize that these recent projects, working with the natural sounds of the environment and the subsequent layers of sound from human activity, were representing my own quest to understand my relationship to the land.

I expect this quest will continue. 

*tatawaw ᑕᑕᐊᐧᐤ

 a Nêhiyawak (Cree) word, often translated as “welcome”, but literally meaning “there is room”.

COVID – 19 info (so far)

by kschoen 0 Comments

So I have been doing as much research as possible over the last few months, trying to stay up to date on the latest research on COVID-19 to understand what the best practices for flute and recorder lessons might be for staying safe and healthy during this pandemic.

I am now going to try to write a bit of a summary of what I have found out (so far) to the best of my understanding, acknowledging that as research continues things will probably change.

There are two questions that need to be answered before we really know how to stay safe:

  1. How much of the virus do you need to be exposed to before you become ill?
  2. How do droplets and aerosols that may contain the virus travel through the air?

The general idea at the moment, is that the longer you are exposed to the virus, or the higher concentration of virus you are exposed to, increases the risk of serious illness. This is why outdoors is much safer than indoors. Indoors, especially in poorly ventilated spaces, there are opportunities for the amount of virus to build up over time. So the best practice is to limit the length of time and the number of  people you are in contact with when you are indoors. And because the virus will build up over time if a series of people use the same space one after the other, we have to think of total usage, not just the few moments that one person is in the space.

The virus is in the water droplets and aerosols (very small vapour particles) that are emitted by people when they breathe, talk, sing, or play wind instruments.  Interestingly enough, recent research as of August 22/20 (see links to U.Cincinnati and the Speaking / Singing study links below) seem to be showing that there is not much difference in aerosol emission between instruments and speech when all are at the same volume, but when anything gets louder, that’s when the aerosol emissions go up. So talking loudly to a large group may be of as much concern as playing a wind instrument. There are also individuals who are “super-emitters” and produce more aerosols than average – many of these studies are using fairly small test groups or individuals, so if any one person is such a “super-emitter” it will skew the results.

We don’t know how much virus is carried by what size of droplet, and we don’t know how much virus is needed to cause illness. To further complicate things, as the aerosols hang in the air the water evaporates from them, potentially making the concentration of virus higher as the droplet shrinks. Large droplets fall to the ground after about 2 metres, which is why that is the recommended social distance, but the aerosols can hang out much longer and travel farther, as they behave more like a gas. A good image is to think of a smoker, and how the smoke travels after it is blown from their mouth. This image also demonstrates why masks are recommended, and plastic face shields are not recommended as PPE without also using a mask (and shows how ineffective a plexiglass shield on its own is as protection against aerosol spread) .

So a music teacher, who normally sees a series of students in their home studio or school classroom over the course of several hours, is not just considering the contact with one student in one lesson, but the accumulated contact from many students and parents. This accumulated contact can build up a high concentration of potentially infectious aerosols in the air of the teachers’ studio, no matter what “safe” distance they remain apart.  And in the case of a home studio, the teacher also lives in the house, and continues to breathe that air after the lessons are done for the day.

Most homes and classrooms are not equipped with high volume HVAC systems that can provide complete fresh air exchange quickly enough to control this situation. Some recommendations have been made regarding leaving rooms empty for a specified time between users, but in most homes and schools (especially in the winter) this would just recirculate the air, not exchange it for fresh. Open windows help a lot, but again, there are limitations to this practice during severe winter weather! A music teacher, who has a limited number of hours of the day available for lessons, will not find it economically feasible to take  30 min between each lesson for air exchange, even if air exchange was possible in their teaching space.

*Edit 2020.11.13* Here is a great article with an infographic that explains the effect of ventilation on virus spread in a variety of indoor environments really well:


*Edit 2020.11.05* I have seen a lot of crazy ideas on social media recently about instrument covers and masks with holes in them (!?) to make playing wind instruments “safer”. Let’s get one thing straight: aerosols are emitted from holes. Making a hole in a mask is like not wearing a mask at all. Period. As for instrument covers – the problem there is that these concentrate aerosol levels within the cover, so you end up releasing more virus at one time into the air when you take the cover off than you would if you were playing with an uncovered instrument IN A WELL VENTILATED SPACE. Since severity of COVID-19 symptoms seem to be linked to the concentration of virus one is exposed to, I would not recommend anything that would concentrate virus particles .

This is just the ventilation question. There is also the cleaning of high touch surfaces between students, as we can also be exposed to the virus by touch. Even if you don’t touch a surface, you can leave behind potential infection when the aforementioned aerosols settle onto surfaces. Even when everyone has their own instrument, stand, music, and other supplies, we still need to consider cleaning doorknobs, railings, and consider either not permitting student use of the bathroom (toilets produce a considerable aerosol mist when flushed!) or allowing time to clean all these surface between each student. Again, not economically feasible given the amount of potential teaching time that would get used up doing this housecleaning.

Given the limitations of our physical teaching situations, and the fact that there is no information yet regarding the length or concentration of virus exposure that leads to illness, most music teachers are continuing to teach remotely for their personal safety and the safety of their students.

Personally, I am exploring these options to speed up the return to in person lessons:

  1. There have been some encouraging results in some studies regarding the use of portable HEPA filters with UVC sterilizing lights to reduce aerosols. I am following this thread with interest, as putting such a filter into my studio space would be quite feasible (if it does prove to reduce aerosols enough for safety).
  2. The detached garage in my back yard has been slated for demolition and replacement for some time. I am exploring options for turning the replacement garage into a separate teaching studio, and rebuilding with these ventilation concerns in mind.
  3. While the weather is mild, I want to try some outdoor lessons.

If you want to follow up on the science behind my summary, here are some links to recent studies. I also want to thank Sasha Garver and Adam Schwalje, for using their connections in the medical  community to inform the musical community about the most recent research. Adam was also involved in assisting with the Preucil School of Music COVID-19 protocols  and the U of Iowa music department COVID-19 protocols (click on the link for examples using HEPA filters, UVC lights, and 30 – 60m ventilation periods between room usage, along with upgraded ventilation systems to make this a practical solution).

Before citing these links, please double check any of this information! Remember that many of these studies are (at time of posting) very recent and not peer-reviewed. There is lots of ongoing research, and this is the information that I have been able to glean in my own reading.  Please do not take this as a comprehensive or up to date date list (although I will add to it when I can). However, since beginning this page, I have been surprised to notice how far behind some of our government guidelines are when compared to the most recent information.

Fall 2020 lesson scheduling and start-up


Most years, I will just have all my students continue in their same lesson time as the previous year unless they require a change.

This year, I have a change that will require a revision of my teaching schedule.

The Augustana campus of U of A, where I teach sessionally, has revised its B.Mus degree to focus on applied pedagogy and studio teaching. As part of this, they have asked me to start a program that can provide Suzuki method teacher training and demonstration classes. This is very good news for the future of Suzuki music education in Alberta, but it does mean that I will have to change my university teaching day to Wednesday instead of Tuesday the way it has been previously.

Rather than just asking all my Wednesday people to switch to Tuesdays, I would like revise my entire teaching schedule, and give everyone a change to change their lesson time to one that might be more convenient, while things are up in the air. To this end, I will be asking everyone to give me three different times when they could come for a lesson, in order of preference. I will collect these times and try to create a schedule that is the most convenient for everyone. In order to see all the times in one place and make sure I haven’t missed anyone, I will be asking you to fill out a Google form with this information. Here is the link: https://forms.gle/QBj9xKFeNf2pUY9q9

Summer duet project:

In our last lessons in June, I was telling all of you that I wanted to try and set up some opportunities to meet outside and play duets, since we had not really seen each other in person since we all went to on line lessons mid March. Since I am now writing this at the beginning of August, it is pretty obvious that I haven’t done this yet. Unfortunately, life caught up to me  – my husband, who had been on the waiting list for open heart surgery when the pandemic closed everything except emergency services at the hospitals, received a call at the end of June when things opened up, telling him to be ready for surgery mid-July. So everything came to a halt while we dealt with this. I am grateful that if it had to be done so suddenly, it did happen in the summer when our schedules were less busy. I would have had to take several weeks off had it happened during the lesson term.

I still want to do a duet project as part of our lesson start-up at the end of August, and get together outdoors before the weather gets too cold. Here’s the plan:

  1. Have our first lesson the week of August 31, and organize our duet assignment.
  2. Work with a recording of the second part the following week.
  3. Meet in person outdoors week of September 14, weather permitting.
Developing independence:

I have always considered one of my most important goals as a teacher is to help my students learn to work independently. In order for this to happen, a student needs these skills:

  • be able to learn by ear (hear pitch and key relationships, rhythm and meter, articulation, phrasing, dynamics, and other nuances )
  • be able to listen to themselves objectively
  • be able to self assess and make corrections without prompting
  • be able to recognize previously learned patterns in new contexts
  • be able to recognize when you don’t know something, and know where to go to find out.
  • eventually, be able to read music

One of the best tools for developing the objective listening and self assessment is making recordings of your playing and listening to them. This is why we do this as a very important part of the graduation program. Back in January, I was drawing up a plan for having my students do more of this kind of work. And then COVID-19 came along, and we were all on line.  To make up for the shortcomings of sound quality with lessons over the internet, I had many of you experiment with sending me recordings, and put a large amount of material up as on line resources, but it was all done in a hurry and not as well organized as I would have liked. Now I would like to take a deep breath and approach this in a more organized way.

So here’s the plan:

  • There will be the occasional week where our lesson does not involve meeting at the same time.
  • Instead, you will send me a recording of a specific practice project.
  • I will send you written feedback and/or a demonstration recording.
  • You will send me a second recording, showing changes based on the feedback received.
  • We will review that recording together as part of your next regularly scheduled lesson.

Unlike an in-person lesson, where all playing and feedback is immediate, this asynchronous lesson will allow you to listen to yourself after you record, think about whether  you are really accomplishing your goals in playing the piece, and make another attempt (or two or three, over several days) until you are satisfied enough to send it to me.

Scheduling asynchronous lessons for the weeks when there are statutory holidays will also help us to keep our momentum going over breaks without needing to reschedule lessons. I will still have extra lesson days as usual! Asynchronous lessons will be in addition to, not instead of, extra lesson days.



Music is a Language – Listening is Important

If I was talking to you, and I suddenly paused in mid sentence, you would probably be able to anticipate the next ________ I was going to say.

This is because you know the language well, and you recognize common phrases and patterns instantly.

If I sang, “Happy birthday, to you, Happy birthday to you …..” you would probably be able to finish the song for me.

You learned this song the same way you learned your language. By hearing it often in the same context, you began to expect to hear it again in similar situations, and could predict when people would probably sing it. When it was sung, you always heard the entire melody, so you knew when it would begin, when it would end, and the special place in the middle that was always different depending on whose birthday it was. And it felt good to sing it, because it was in an environment of happy celebration (which often included cake!)

But why stop with just “Happy Birthday to You”?

You can learn any music the same way that you learned “Happy Birthday.”

You can understand where it begins, where it ends, and the special places in the middle where something different happens. You can start without being prompted, and pick it up at any point to finish it. You can do this with a simple folk song or with a piece of complex classical music.

All you need to do is listen to it.

In the same way that as a baby you listened to your parents talking and absorbed your native language easily and accurately, you can listen to music and absorb the vocabulary and grammar of the language of music.

Every person can.

All you need to do is listen.

But you have to listen more than just once. Just like babies hear words many, many times before they begin to imitate the sounds, you need to listen to music repeatedly, until you can anticipate the next sound as easily as you can anticipate my next _______.

Then you will recognize the same patterns in other pieces of music, and anticipate when they will happen.
And you will be pleasantly surprised if a composer does something slightly different from what you are expecting, and show you something new! In this way you will learn more patterns, the same way that we learn the meaning of a new word from its context in a sentence.

Congratulations! You can now speak the language of music.

Effortlessly, the same way that you understand what you are now reading.

OK, I get it. Now how do I do it?

Your teacher will have many resources for helping you organize your listening. Approaches will vary depending on the needs of individual students. Here are some strategies to make learning easy by setting yourself up with a comprehensive listening program.

Get your playback devices organized

Download your assigned playlist on to the device you will actually use to listen to it. Yes, download. Do not rely on streaming services. If your computer is in an office where you never listen to music, put it on your phone or tablet. Parents, make sure you both have all the music on both your phones. so it is instantly available at all times. If your child has their own device, make sure they have access to the music on it, but do not expect them to be responsible for doing all their listening unsupervised. Use decent external speakers or headphones – do not rely on the tinny internal speaker on most mobile devices. If you use CDs, burn several copies – one for the car, one for the stereo, one for backup when one gets lost or damaged.

Listen repeatedly

Set your device to play the same track or playlist on repeat. You need to hear the same tune many times before you can confidently anticipate what comes next. Set a goal – listening to a piece 100 times before trying to play it yourself is not unreasonable.

Listen ahead

Don’t just listen to the piece you are working on right now. Alternate between listening to your current working piece and listening to the entire playlist. This allows you to look forward to the pieces you will be learning soon, reviews your memory of past pieces, and avoids listening fatigue from too much constant repetition of just one thing. Listen to other pieces for your instrument as well, not just the assigned repertoire.

Consider your listening environment

Listening in the car is super convenient. It is a wonderful way to seize an opportunity, so do take advantage of it. But remember that inside a vehicle is a noisy environment – engine noise, traffic noise, etc. will mask many of of the expressive elements of the music. This is fine if all you want to do is get to know the pitches and rhythm. But if you also want to anticipate dynamic variations, articulations, vibrato, and other nuances of phrasing that are not always written in the score, you need to listen in an environment where it is quiet enough to hear them. I recommend having a quiet time at home when you make a habit of listening to music.

Use both passive and active listening

Let the music play in the background during quiet activities and meals, and when you are sitting in the car. This is passive listening. Active listening is when you engage with the music as it is playing. For a beginner, this can be as simple as beating time with feet or hands while listening, or moving freely to the music. More advanced students can alternate playing a section of the piece with listening to a section of the piece, or play along with the whole thing to feel how the melody fits with the accompaniment.

Listen to a variety of versions of the same piece

Listening to different recordings of the same piece will draw your attention to the variety of nuances used by individual performers. Imitating these different ways of playing the same passage help you make your own artistic decisions about how to play it yourself.

Did you find this article helpful? You can download it here as a printable .pdf

Review in practice: why and how.

Review in practice: why and how.

Reviewing previously learned material in practice:

When you are a beginner, you don’t know many things yet, and all of them are new. 

So when you practice, you practice everything. It doesn’t take very much time.

Then you get to a point where you know more than you have time to play in one practice session. This is when you need to organize your material on a rotation, for constant review.

There are two categories of review: patterns & pieces


These are the building blocks of music. Scales, triads, and other patterns recur in different contexts in every piece of music. 

We extract these patterns from the pieces and isolate them for individual practice. This is a very methodical and efficient way of practice to develop facility on the instrument and to train the ear and fingers to expect typical pitch and fingering combinations. 


Patterns, however, are meaningless unless placed in the context of an expressive melody. So we also need to review our pieces. 

You know how  sometimes you meet someone in the grocery store, and you feel you ought to know them, but can’t remember who they are? It may be someone you know from work, but in a different location you can’t recall  their name. (And feel slightly embarrassed.)

In the same way, you may meet a pattern that you already know in a new piece, but you don’t recognize it and need to learn it all over again because the new context makes it feel very unfamiliar. 

This is why we need to review all our known pieces, so that we can become familiar with all the different contexts where we have to be able to recognize a pattern. 

And we need to review them in different settings and venues: practice, lesson, concert, group, festival, exam … so that we can recognize these things in any setting, and not draw a blank like you did with your acquaintance in the grocery store. 


If we review both patterns and pieces, we become very good at recognizing known patterns in a variety of contexts. This makes it easier to learn new pieces quickly.

If we don’t review, learning new pieces takes a very long time, as you have to do everything as if it was for the very first time. 


Your teacher will have many resources for  helping you organize your practice time. Approaches will vary depending on the needs of individual students.

Here’s the  basic idea:

  • Take all the pieces and exercises you know
  • Divide them into groups based on the main technical point required to play them
        • e.g. high register, low register, fast scale passages, sustained tone, specific keys, etc..
  • Play a different one from each group every day
  • In this way, you will play everything you know over the course of a few days, while reviewing all your technical abilities every day.  

Some pieces may exercise more than one technical point. These ones can get swapped around between groups or become a group on their own.

Newer pieces can be in a group that gets played very day, until they are as familiar as the older ones. Then you can put them in a group where they get played after a longer interval.

If you find a piece that you feel that you have forgotten, you can add it to the every day group until it is back to being familiar again. 

You can combine groups into bigger categories and review pieces after a longer interval. This will exercise your long term recall. If you find yourself having to re-learn pieces after a long interval, make your categories smaller so the pieces rotate more often. 

I find this system to be a good indicator of when a student is ready to go on to something new. If the review of the known scale patterns and pieces is completed quickly and confidently, there will be time left in the lesson or practice to start a new project. If the review takes a long time, and spots need to be re-learned, that will use all the available time. And that is OK, because that is what that student needs to be doing before going on to new things.


Utrecht – a pilgrimage to the home of Jacob van Eyck

Utrecht – a pilgrimage to the home of Jacob van Eyck
Playing in the cloister garden of the Dom cathedral in Utrecht, NL

I took some time while at the Open Recorder days conference to make a some research trips to Utrecht, the home of Jacob van Eyck. Van Eyck was the composer of Der Fluyten Lust-hof, a collection of popular songs with variations, intended for performance on recorder. This work is still the largest single composition ever written for unaccompanied woodwind instrument, and a major source for information about performance style of the 17th century.

I toured all of the churches and the cathedral bell tower where van Eyck worked as carillonneur, and thanks to the guidance of Dr. Thiemo Wind, also found most of the houses where he lived and the location of the former public gardens where he played his recorder in the evenings.

Outside the Janskirk with Dr. Thiemo Wind, where the original public garden where van Eyck played was located.

My recent performance projects have been using the sound of the environment to create site specific concert programs and new works. So I also made a number of field recordings of the sounds we heard while exploring the town of Utrecht, for use in a new concert featuring the works of van Eyck.

I gratefully acknowledge travel assistance received for this project through the Edmonton Arts Council grant program