Rosemary Smith
Mountain's life has been characterized by exploration and adventure, in the
geographical/cultural realms as well as in the intellectual/creative sense. Her
father's pioneering work in the field of comparative religions was crucial in
stimulating these explorations, and her husband Harry Mountain (sculptor and
Celtologist) has proved the perfect companion for continuing them.
Rosemary was born
in 1954 in Montreal, Canada. Her musical
training began at home, the youngest of five children who each received music
lessons on piano and one other instrument; Rosemary started the piano at age 4
(at her own insistence) and violin at age 9.
Listening to "classical" music, both live and recorded, formed
an important and extensive part of her daily life. At the age of 9, a year in India exposed her
to the richness of music of that country -- an experience which profoundly
affected her future perceptions of musical sounds and structures. In the
late sixties, rock music became another important influence, again in live as
well as recorded formats, as the family were then living in Cambridge,
Massachusetts where Sundays on the "Common" were a favourite venue
for the new American subculture.
In 1970, Rosemary
moved back to Canada and was introduced to jazz and the more complex
instrumental rock forms. The distance
between these contemporary musics and those which she perceived as the mainstay
of formal musical training in the conservatories propelled her towards the
field of visual arts, and in 1975 she enrolled in the prestigious Nova Scotia
College of Art & Design. There,
luckily, she met the sculptor Harry Mountain (recently graduated from NSCAD),
who urged her to take advantage of her many years of musical training and enrol
in a composition course. In 1976,
therefore, she and Harry moved to London, Ontario where she began the 4-year
BMus programme in theory and composition, studying with Peter Paul Koprowski,
and continuing her study of violin in lessons with the renowned Yuri
Mazurkevich. By 1978 she was having her
compositions performed, not only in concerts but also in multidisciplinary
collaborations.
Since then, her
time has been spent in a variety of activities within the musical world,
juxtaposed with travel, first within Canada and finally into Europe. Formal study included a Master's in
composition with Rudolf Komorous and a PhD in music theory with Harald Krebs. As well as teaching (in secondary schools,
colleges and universities), Rosemary spent many years as a freelance music
copyist, working for clients including the CBC, Oxford University Press, the
Canadian Music Centre, and (primarily) R. Murray Schafer. She has also enjoyed work in the areas of
arts administration, hosting of a weekly radio show on 20th-century music, and
occasional performing. Compositional
activities were increasingly complemented by in related fields, including the
study of the role of music in multi-disciplinary contexts, perceptual &
cognitive issues of music perception, and appropriate methods of analysis to
reflect the growing diversity of musical styles.
In January 1994, having just completed her Ph.D. in rhythmic
theory, Rosemary became a professor of music at the new, developing Department
of Communication & Art at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, where she
taught a wide variety of courses, helped develop curriculum and research
programmes, and worked in administrative roles.
She moved back to Montreal in the fall of 1999 to take up a position in
the Department of Music at Concordia University, where her teaching was also in
diverse areas of music from general courses for non-music majors to
composition, analysis, 20th century history, sound for animation,
electroacoustics and supervision of various students in interdisciplinary
masters and doctoral programmes. [See courses taught]. She also helped build Hexagram, the
inter-university Institute of Research/Creation in Media Arts & Technology,
of which she was Scientific Director for Concordia from 2004-2006. Since then,
her time has been dedicated more to sorting out the various strands of her
research into manageable projects, and to managing the expansion of IMP-NESTAR. She is currently taking advantage of a
"gradual retirement" plan at Concordia to consolidate her many
research findings and begin the process to disseminate them through
conventional & unconventional means, while preparing for a move back to
Europe and return to more composition, performance, research and exploration.
see also: influences
Longy School of Music,
Cambridge, Mass. (1965-1970) -violin, piano, solfege, ensemble
Royal Conservatory of
Music, Toronto, Ont. (1970-72) -violin, piano, chamber orchestra
Nova Scotia College of Art
& Design, Canada (1975, 77) - sculpture, art history (BFA programme, incomplete)
B.Mus. honours (1980)
University of Western Ontario, Canada (theory & composition)
M.Mus. (1986) University
of Victoria, B.C., Canada (composition)
Ph.D. (1993) University of
Victoria, B.C., Canada (interdisciplinary: rhythmic
theory – psychology - philosophy)
music teaching
Concordia
University, Montreal, Canada 1999-
University of Aveiro, Portugal 1994-99
Manor & High Tunstall Schools, Hartlepool, England 1992-93
Arthur Mellows Village College, Glinton, England 1992
Northern Lights College, Fort Nelson, B.C., Canada 1989-90
University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., Canada (part-time) 1983-88
Affiliations / memberships:
national music archive &
promotion organization
Canadian Music Centre – Associate composer 2003-
research institutes
CIRMMT - Centre for
Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology 2012-
Hexagram – Institute for Research / Creation in Media Arts &
Technologies 2001-
UnICA - Communication & Art Research Unit, U. of Aveiro,
Portugal 1998-2002
research teams
IMP - Interactive Multimedia Playroom / Thesaurus [P.I.] 2002-
NESTAR - Network of Exploratory Spaces for Temporal Arts Research 2009-
EARS - Electroacoustic Resource Site Consortium 2004-
scholarly
organizations
International Society for the Study of Time 2009-
Systematic and Cognitive Musicology Association 1999-
Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) 1986-2003
European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM) 1996-2005
Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC) 2000-2009
Society for Music Theory (SMT) 1998-2001