Next week, the IU Department of Music Theory welcomes musician and psychology and neuroscience researcher Psyche Loui to deliver two talks as part of the Five Friends Master Class Series in Music Theory. Dr. Loui is Associate Professor of Creativity and Creative Practice and Director of the Music, Imaging, and Neural Dynamics Laboratory (MIND Lab) at Northeastern University.

In addition to her lectures, Dr. Loui will hold office hours with graduate students. She will also present a workshop where she’ll discuss two papers, “New music system reveals spectral contribution to statistical learning” and “Generating New Musical Preferences From Multilevel Mapping of Predictions to Reward” with a group of graduate students from Music Theory, Cognitive Science, and a handful of undergraduate science students.

Wednesday, March 27
4:00 pm, SM267
Music Theory Colloquium Series Guest Lecture
Psyche Loui (Northeastern University), “Imaginings from an unfamiliar world: The Science of a New Musical System”

Abstract: The ability to create and to appreciate new music depends on prediction and imagination, a generative act that is deeply rooted in culture and familiarity, while also depending on the ability predict events in the near future. I will present recent work that combines music theory and music technology with cross-cultural behavioral testing, neuropsychological assessments, and neuroimaging studies in my lab on how and why humans across societies learn to love music, uncovering the role of different types of prediction on the dopaminergic reward system in the brain. These results are the first to highlight the process by which we learn from our predictions and our cultural backgrounds, and that learning itself becomes rewarding.”

Thursday. March 28
5:00 pm, Ford-Crawford Hall
Music Theory Five Friends Guest Lecture
Psyche Loui (Northeastern University), “Why Music Moves Us: New Directions in Music for Brain Health”

Abstract: Music is an integral part of every human society, and musical experiences have been associated with human health and well-being since antiquity. Recent use-inspired research on Music-Based Interventions (MBIs) include receptive (music listening) and active (music making) programs designed to make measurable changes to human health and well-being. Designing these interventions consistently and with measurable benefits require addressing the question of dosage, which refers to the duration and intensity (dosage) of the intervention. I argue that cognitive neuroscience can inform the question of dosage in MBIs by quantifying the effects of receptive and active music interventions on predictive coding in the central nervous system. As a ubiquitous feature of biological systems, predictive coding is posited to underlie perception, action, and reward. I will present recent work that encompasses behavioral testing, neuropsychological assessments, and neuroimaging (EEG and fMRI) studies in my lab on how and why humans across societies learn to love music, uncovering the role of different types of prediction on the activity and connectivity of the reward system. Given that music taps into a relatively domain-general reward system which in turn motivates a variety of cognitive behaviors, I will also consider how this knowledge can be translated into MBIs for those with neurological and/or psychiatric disorders, presenting preliminary results on Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease.”

Five Friends Master Class Series – Honoring Robert Samels

The Five Friends Master Class Series honoring the lives of five talented Jacobs School of Music students—Chris Carducci, Garth Eppley, Georgina Joshi, Zachary Novak, and Robert Samels—was established in 2012 with a gift of $1 million from the Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc. This annual series of lectures, master classes, and residencies by a number of the world’s leading musicians and teachers focuses on areas of interest most relevant to the lives of the five friends—voice performance, choral conducting, early music, music theory, composition, and opera. The Georgina Joshi Foundation was established in 2007 as the vision of Georgina Joshi’s mother, Louise Addicott-Joshi, to provide educational and career development opportunities for young musicians and to encourage and support public performance of music. The gift to the school establishes a permanent way for the world to learn about each of the five friends, their musical talents and passions, and to encourage the development of similar talents and passions in current and future music students. The establishment of this endowment by the families is administered by the IU Foundation.

Bass-baritone and composer Robert Samels was born on June 2, 1981, and died in a plane crash on April 20, 2006. He was a doctoral student in choral conducting at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and had studied voice with Giorgio Tozzi and Costanza Cuccaro. He began his vocal studies with Alfred Anderson at the University of Akron and Andreas Poulimenos at Bowling Green State University. Samels had recently appeared as Mr. Gibbs in the world premiere of Our Town by Ned Rorem, as Marco in the collegiate premiere of William Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge, and as Joseph and Herod in the collegiate premiere of El Nino by John Adams. In September 2005, he conducted the premiere of his own opera, Pilatvs. As a member of the Wolf Trap Opera Company for 2006, he would have added three roles that summer, including Bartolo in Le Nozze di Figaro, Friar Laurence in Roméo et Juliette, and Pluto in Telemann’s Orpheus. Other opera credits included the title roles of Don Pasquale and Il Turco in Italia, as well as Leporello in Don Giovanni, Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the summer of 2004, he performed Creon in the New York premiere of John Eaton’s Antigone. Samels also frequently performed in the oratorio repertoire. In the spring of 2005, he was selected as a semi-finalist in the annual competition of the Oratorio Society of New York. He was an announcer with public radio station WFIU, as well as the host and producer of its Cantabile program. A soloist with Aguavá New Music Studio, he had recently performed a concert at the Library of Congress. Samels was an associate instructor in the Jacobs School’s Music Theory Department, where was loved and admired by his students.

The IU Department of Music Theory is excited to welcome Fred Everett Maus to Bloomington to deliver two talks as part of the Five Friends Master Class Series in Music Theory.

Wednesday, Feb. 21
4:00 pm, SM267
Music Theory Colloquium Series Guest Lecture
Fred Maus (University of Virginia), “‘Teach Yourself to Fly’: Pauline Oliveros and Musical Analysis”

Thursday. Feb. 22
5:00 pm, Ford-Crawford Hall
Music Theory Guest Lecture
Fred Maus (University of Virginia), “Thinking Again about Masculinity and Music Theory”

Prof. Maus teaches music at the University of Virginia, where he is director of Undergraduate Programs and associate professor in Critical & Comparative Studies. He has written on music and narrative, gender and sexuality in relation to discourse about music, queer popular music, embodiment, music therapy, trauma, and other subjects. He was a founding member of the editorial board of the journal Women and Music and for several years its book review editor. He served as the first chair of the Queer Resource Group of the Society for Music Theory (SMT), and more recently as the first chair of SMT’s Standing Committee on LGBTQ+ Issues. Recent essays include “Narrative and Identity in Three Songs about AIDS” (2013), “Classical Concert Music and Queer Listening” (2013), “Sexuality, Trauma, and Dissociated Expression” (2015), “LGBTQ+ Lives in Professional Music Theory” (2020), “The B-52s, Loss, and Defiance” (2023), and “Queer Sexuality and Musical Narrative” (2023). He is co-editor, with the late Sheila Whiteley, of The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness (2022).