“Being taught by my students!” is what Associate Professor
of Music Michael Farley most enjoys about
his work. In that regard, he epitomizes the two-way relationship
between faculty and students at St. Lawrence.
Farley
cites one example of how this relationship can be transforming: “Last
year, I worked with one of my favorite students on a senior project
concerning the role of the music producer/composer in hip- hop. This
was a student who had experienced a great deal of frustration
in finding his voice as an intellectual. His
final result was convincing and a product of loving care. All of my best experiences
are related to watching the light come on for students who, in a different
setting, would be described as marginal. We don't give up easily here.”
With
degrees from Central Missouri State and the University of Iowa, Farley
pursues creative work and research in two areas. In the creative
sphere, he’s
a composer working with combinations of electronic media
and live performance. “I'm
working with a set of poems concerning the world of the great
jazz saxophonist Lester Young,” explains Farley, himself an
accomplished sax player. “I'll
be playing sax (live) over my own dramatic and electronically processed
readings of the text.”
Meanwhile, his research is concerned
with the role of “place” and
music-making in the U.S. He’s
looking particularly at small record labels produced in the U.S.
from the late 1940s to the early ’50s). His analysis
of regionalism
and the blues was just published in the two-volume Encyclopedia
of the Blues (Routledge).
Outside of work, Farley enjoys reading
and fly-fishing. He also sings with the University
Chorus.
