OLLI-UA Online Zoom Offerings

This seminar will relate to a University of Arizona research project, “Lifetimes of Listening: The Arizona Musical Memory Archive,” begun in early 2020.

Human lives are filled with musical memories linked to family, community, and the wider world. The human propensity for recalling music connects people across cultures and time. The Arizona Music Memory Archive celebrates and documents such memories, to create a podcast of recorded interviews for scholastic research and public enjoyment.

In the course, a seminar of up to 12 participants, we’ll discuss musical memories and their impact on our experience of music. We’ll read and reflect on writings by music researchers (Oliver Sacks, Dan Levitin), and examine our musical memories and why they stay in our hearts and minds with such deep and enduring significance. We’ll also become engaged with the “Lifetimes of Listening” research that SGL Dan Kruse and UA School of Music Prof. Brian Moon have initiated, reflecting upon interviews already conducted and conducting new interviews. There will also be one writing assignment, a brief essay reflecting on a “Musical Memory” of your own. The course offers an opportunity for class members to learn about and contribute to a noted UA research effort that may grow in scope and impact over the next several years. Prof. Moon will join us for one or more class sessions. Each “section” of the course is limited to a maximum enrollment of 12 participants in order to assure the substantial interaction and discussion which the subject matter demands.

Instructor: Dan Kruse

Dan Kruse holds a Master's in Ethnomusicology from the UA Fred Fox School of Music (2012). His master's thesis, an award-winning documentary, "ZOOM!", was screened at several Arizona film festivals. In semi-retirement, his primary passion is the investigation of "the human relationship to music", including research, lectures and the creation of music-related documentary works.

His 2014-15 UA Confluencenter-funded research study, the Arizona Ear Worm Project, resulted in a science documentary on the project. He is also a (very) part-time local host on Tucson's NPR affiliate, KUAZ-FM. Dan very much looks forward to preparing and presenting his OLLI classes!