Naomi for the win!

Naomi and Lucy at Laurier’s Ken Murray Competition, January 25, 2025 Barber Studio student Naomi Schlegel (class of 2025) was the first prize winner of Laurier’s Ken Murray Concerto Competition for 2025, giving an outstanding performance of the Doll Song...

Full Circle

Big Red Ball (Kimberly Barber, taken December 2024, Vancouver, BC) This week I had the pleasure of coming full circle. I had a “debriefing” with one of my former students, Dr. Elizabeth Lepock, with whom I co-taught the new course “Pedagogy and...

Just a member of the band

Girl Band (sourced on Snappa.com, January 2025) This week I made the decision to sneak back out of performing retirement. I’m joining a band. True story! Not just any band, mind you. And it’s not the kind of band you might typically think of; it’s a...

Becoming and Overcoming

Photo uploaded from Snappa.com December 2024 It’s the reflective time of year, where the days get shorter, we cuddle up with a hot cup of cocoa and we settle in to think about the year that’s passed (or almost passed). For me as a solstice baby, it’s...

Hard Things: revisited

Butterfly among the rocks (Kimberly Barber, Kathleen Lake, Yukon, July 2024) I’ve talked about Hard Things in this space before, and this is the time of year (about 3/4 of the way through the term) when such themes frequently re-surface. Students are preparing...