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Anne Harley,

Professor of Music; Director of the Clark Humanities Museum; Adviser in the Environmental Analysis Non-Science Track
Music
Phone: 71880
[email protected]

Biography

Canadian-American performer-educator-scholar Anne Dorothy Harley joined the faculty at Scripps College in 2009. Since then, she has dedicated herself to empowering her students to use their voices via the humanities and applied voice performance, and to commissioning new works to perform with her colleagues and students, primarily through the Voices of the Pearl project, which she founded in 2011. Voices of the Pearl (www.voicesofthepearl.org ) commissions new settings of the texts by and about female mystical practitioners from all world traditions. She frequently travels to Asia and Europe to teach and perform and has held several professorships, fellowships, and residencies across the globe.

Academic History

  • 2022-present: Professor, Music Department, Scripps College
  • 2015-present: Associate Professor, Music Department, Scripps College
  • 2015-2017: Chair, Music Department, Scripps College
  • 2009-2015: Assistant Professor, Music Department, Scripps College
  • 2006-2009: Assistant Professor, Music Department, UNC Charlotte
  • 2006: Doctor of Musical Arts, Boston University (Historical Performance)
  • 1996: Opera Certificate, Boston University (Opera Institute)
  • 1994: Master of Music, Boston University (Voice Performance)
  • 1989: Bachelor of Arts, Yale College (Comparative Literature)

Certifications (selective list)

  • 2019: Inside-Out Program Teaching Certification
  • 2018-19: Claremont Faculty Leadership Program
  • 2018-ongoing: 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training (expected completion 2021)
  • 2004: Fitzmaurice Voicework Certification. Associate Teacher

Academic Focus

Working at the intersection of performance and scholarship, Harley is extremely interested in the creation of interdisciplinary and intercultural performance projects that engender new and diverse forms of community. Some of her recent projects employ newly composed music and/or collaborative theatre as a form of community action, and she has frequently engaged in faculty-student research partnerships.

Building on her experience as a performer and director of opera, in 2011 she founded and now directs the commissioning/performance project Voices of the Pearl. The project commissions, performs, records, and tours new contemporary classical music settings of texts by and about female esoteric practitioners from all world traditions. These projects have been awarded four times (2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021) by the National Endowment for the Arts, and recognized internationally.  Working with scholars of female spiritual leaders, over the past decade Harley has curated a series of new compositions that illuminate and reclaim women’s writings that have been lost to the mainstream. Her work functions to diversify the US recital hall in other ways as well: most of her commissions set text in languages not usually heard in the classical recital hall (Farsi, Mandarin, Khmer, Pali, Kannada, Hebrew, etc) and most composers she has commissioned are either non-male, or of color, or both.

Harley’s written scholarship investigates interdisciplinary and intercultural comparative embodied performance pedagogy. She has written and presented on historical performance practice, vocal pedagogy in theatre and music disciplines, and the construction of performance collaborations across language and cultural divides. She has held visiting professorships in Germany and the People’s Republic of China, in both music and theatre departments.

Courses Taught

  • Humanities Core I: Culture, Knowledge and Representation
  • Humanities Core II: Mobilizing Art: Creating Activist Performances
  • Humanities Core III: Democracy, Populism and American Musical Theater
  • MUS 110a Music in Western Civilization I
  • MUS 110b Music in Western Civilization II
  • MUS162 Musical Texts: Text-setting, Analysis, and Diction
  • MUS 170 H/F Voice
  • MUS 180 H/F Voice for Musical Theater
  • MUS 172 Chamber Music
  • MUS 189 Junior Recital
  • MUS190 Senior Music Colloquium (team-taught; previous catalog)
  • MUS 191 Senior Thesis
  • MUS 191H Honors Senior Thesis
  • MUS 199 Independent Study in Music: Reading and Research
  • EA110/TNDY 407 Experiencing Sustainability (team-taught)

Selected Research and Publications

  • 2020: “Connecting Performance and Performing Connection: How the performing arts can usefully engage an international and interdisciplinary cohort in pedagogy and research.” ASIANetworks Exchange.
  • 2015: “Russian Women Composers from the Court of Catherine the Great: The Romances of Princess Natalia Ivanovna Kurakina (1768-1831).” Journal of Singing - the Official Journal of the National Association of Teachers of Singing 72, no. 1 (Sep, 2015): 11-21.
  • 2011: “Orality overlooked: What can be learned from oral pedagogies of music” Voice and Speech Review, 7:1, (2011): 104-112.
Commissions: premieres and recordings for Voices of the Pearl (partial list)
  • April 2024: Thunder Perfect Mind (sung in Coptic), by Jane E. Sheldon. Co-sponsored by NEA ArtWorks, Scripps College, the Center for the Study of World Religions (Harvard Divinity School), and Voices of the Pearl.
  • April 2024: The name of the sound and the sound of the name (sung in Coptic), by Julian Bennett Holmes. Co-sponsored by NEA ArtWorks, Scripps College, the Center for the Study of World Religions (Harvard Divinity School), and Voices of the Pearl.
  • Nov 2023: Qazal (sung in Farsi), by Aida Shirazi. Co-sponsored by NEA ArtWorks, Scripps College, and Voices of the Pearl.
  • Nov 2023: Lament for a Dead Child (sung in Russian), by Moshe Shulman. Co-sponsored by Scripps College.
  • Nov 2023: Six Ukrainian Songs (sung in Ukrainian), by Moshe Shulman. Co-sponsored by Scripps College.
  • June 2022: Conference of the Birds (sung in Farsi and English), by Fahad Siadat. Co-sponsored by NEA ArtWorks, Scripps College, and Voices of the Pearl, and others.
  • Nov 2022: A message from the mangrove forest (2022) by YII Kah Hoe (in English). Co-sponsored by Scripps College and Columbia University.
  • March 2018: Therīgāthā Inside Aura (sung in Khmer, Pali, and English), by Chinary Ung. Co-sponsored by NEA ArtWorks, Scripps College, Chapman University, and Voices of the Pearl.
  • Jan 2018: You Moving Stars (sung in Chinese and Pali) by Emilie Cecilia LeBel. Co-sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, Scripps College, and Voices of the Pearl.
  • April 2017: PERSEVERE (sung in Tibetan and Pali) by Karola Obermüller. Co-sponsored by NEA ArtWorks, Scripps College, and Voices of the Pearl.
  • 2016: Seven Prophetesses (sung in Hebrew) by Moshe Shulman. Co-sponsored by Harvard Fromm Foundation, Scripps College, and Voices of the Pearl.
  • 2015: Snowflakes, Blossoms: Friends of the Way (sung in Chinese) by Marjorie Merryman. Co-sponsored by Scripps College, and Voices of the Pearl.
  • 2015: Thinking of Elder Sister Zhen (sung in Chinese) by Tom Flaherty. Sponsored by Scripps College.
  • 2015: Forest Threnody (sung in Bahasa Malaysia, English and Pali) by Yii Kah Hoe, Co-sponsored by Scripps College, and EnviroLab Asia. Co-commissioned with Charles W. Kamm for the Joint Choirs of the Claremont Colleges.
  • 2014: Sounds Ineffable (sung in original Pali) by Bill Alves, Sponsored by Scripps College.
  • 2014: Divan-I Hayati (sung in original Farsi) by Kati Agocs, Co-sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, and Scripps College.
  • 2013: Kollwitz Konnex: “…im Frieden seiner Hände” by Ralf Yusuf Gawlick. Sponsored by Boston College. Co-commissioned with Eliot Fisk, guitarist.
  • 2013: True Witness: A Civil Rights Cantata by Jodi Goble. Co-commissioned with Charles W. Kamm for the Joint Choirs of the Claremont Colleges, and Inside-Out Choir (Crossroads).

Awards and Honors

  • 2022: Recipient of the Scripps College Mary Wig Johnson Faculty Achievement Award for excellence in service
  • 2009-present: Voting member of the Grammys
  • 2010, 2012, 2014, 2018: Recipient of the Scripps College Mary Wig Johnson Faculty Achievement Award for excellence in scholarship
  • 2016, 2017, 2018, 2021: National Endowment for the Arts: ArtWorks Grants
  • 2018, 2020: Hour-long feature on ‘Voices of the Pearl’ with John Schneider on ‘Global Village’ KPFK 90.7
  • 2017-2018: Canada Council for the Arts ‘Research and Creation’ Grant for IRCAM collaboration with composer Marta Gentilucci
  • 2017: Short-term Fellowship, Huntington Library
  • 2007-2017: Canada Council for the Arts Artist Management and Travel Grants
  • 2016-2017: Visiting foreign expert: Hunan Provincial Government at Hunan Women’s College, Hunan Normal College and Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, PRC
  • 2014: Artist-in-Residence, Saari-Kone Foundation
  • 2013: DAAD Visiting Professorship, Hochschule für Theater, Musik und Medien Hannover
  • 2013: Canada Council for the Arts Grant for Music: Commissioning of Canadian Composers
  • 2013: Hsu Travel Grant for Academic Interactions with China, Scripps College
  • 2012: Fellowship for Creative and Performing Arts, American Antiquarian Society
  • 2001: Noah Greenberg Award, American Musicological Society

Performances, Lectures, and Visiting Professorships

  • 2018: Invited lecturer, curator, and performer at the Salzburg Mozarteum, Austria.
  • 2017: Invited faculty lecturer, Beijing Minzu University, Religious Studies Department, PRC.
  • 2017: Conference panelist, International Daoist Studies Conference, Nanterre University, Paris, France.
  • 2017: Conference panelist, Asia Networks Annual Conference, Chicago “Convening a World: Fostering Interdisciplinarity through the Digital Humanities” San Diego, California.
  • 2017: Invited feature performer and lecturer at John Donald Robb Trust Annual Composers’ Symposium University of New Mexico (Albuquerque), New Mexico.
  • 2015-2018: Invited faculty lecturer, project coordinator, and performer: Burapha University, Thailand in conjunction with EnviroLab Asia.
  • 2015: Invited faculty lecturer and performer: SEGI College, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
  • 2015: Invited faculty lecturer and performer in China 1) Beijing Normal Conservatory 2) Chinese National Library (Beijing) 3) ASEAN Annual Music Festival, Nanning 4) Hunan Women’s University (delegation leader; 10 Scripps faculty and student participants).
  • 2014: Invited faculty lecturer, Fudan University, Shanghai, PRC.
  • 2013: Invited lecturer, “Cultural Encounters and the Discourses of Scholarship” Workshop at the Graduate School of the Universität Rostock and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock, Rostock, Germany. Paper title: “From Eye to Ear: The Benefits of Training in Oral Vocal Traditions for Western Conservatory-Trained Singers”.
  • 2012: Invited lead teacher & director for a 3-week extended voice workshop organized at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, Shanghai, PRC.
  • 2012: Invited masterclass presenter & teacher, Shanghai Conservatory, Shanghai, PRC.
  • 2012: Invited lead teacher & stage director Research Centre for Ethnic Music and Musical Theatre School of Arts of Beijing University, Beijing, PRC.