Tom has been invited to deliver a paper at the International Conference on the Arts in Society at Emily Carr College in Vancouver, BC. The paper (which is variant of the paper delivered in April) is called  "The Shapes of Things: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Teaching Form and Analysis."

More info at: Arts in Society

Here is the abstract for the paper:

The purpose of this paper is to recalibrate the topic of FORM, from its traditional role as an advanced music-theory class in a typical undergraduate curriculum (most often called Form and Analysis) to a generative, unifying, and transdisciplinary concept. The central focus of this recalibration is a class called The Shapes of Things, currently being offered in its second iteration at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle Washington. While most traditional “form” classes focus on a limited amount of classical repertoire from the common-practice period, and concentrate on an understanding of classical forms, The Shapes of Things proposes a new approach to "Form and Analysis,” tasking the students to synthesize their intuitive, critical thinking with a paradigm of reverse-engineering that allows them to seek the "big idea" of a piece. The paper will outline the learning outcomes and curriculum for this new class, show student work (including analysis of architecture, painting, cinema, and poetry), posit possible transdisciplinary approaches to formal analysis, and bring forward one potential pathway out of the stagnant curricular roundabout in which music programs in colleges and universities find themselves, and into the realm of creativity, integration, and diversity.