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I am an educator, musician, and researcher with more than twenty years of experience in public education. Throughout my career, I have worked as a teacher, consultant, and instructor in post-secondary and additional qualification programs for educators.
My work focuses on collaborative- and practitioner-based inquiry, exploring how sound and listening pedagogies can create more inclusive and culturally responsive approaches to music education. I am particularly interested in how these practices can help educational institutions better reflect the sonic identities, musical traditions, and lived experiences that students bring to the classrooms and courses.
I have had the privilege of working alongside teachers, students, musicians, and community partners across Canada and Latin America. Together, we have used listening and sound as tools for facilitating creativity, connection, learning, and community building.
I’ve developed resources, facilitated workshops, and consulted for organizations including the National Arts Centre, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Ontario Museums Association, Massey Hall/Roy Thomson Hall Corporation, and the City of Toronto. As a musician, I’ve recorded and toured with artists such as Selina Martin, Kael Reid, Paul Linklater, Dave Bidini (Rheostatics), and John K. Samson (The Weakerthans), among others.
My Mennonite grandparents fled religious persecution in the former U.S.S.R. and ended up settling in Manitoba on Treaty 1 territory: the land of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, Dene, and Métis Nations. I grew up as a settler on this land and I have many privileges because of this.
My research focuses on sound, listening, and their related pedagogies, as well as on collaborative inquiry and critical practitioner research, particularly in public schools. My thesis research on the pedagogies of R. Murray Schafer and Pauline Oliveros explored the potential of centering students' knowledge and sonic experiences in music classrooms. I am expanding this work through projects in Canada and Brazil, exploring sound and listening pedagogies as an anti-colonial practice and investigating how educators’ identity, privilege, and positionality shape their teaching. Related to these areas, I'm exploring how improvisational pedagogies in post-secondary music programs might help students develop a teaching stance that fosters more caring, creative, and adaptable student-centered learning.
I continue to disseminate findings through publications, audio papers, and public scholarship. I also collaborate with school boards and provincial education systems on inclusive pathways, culturally relevant, anti-colonial approaches to music teaching.
- 2024 Fund for Scholarly Research and Creative Work: Remix Camp: A Collaborative Inquiry and A Way of Listening (Sonic Ethnography).
- 2024 SSHRC Institutional Insight Development Grant (SIG): Resounding Schafer’s Sound Education: A Collaborative Inquiry with Brazilian Music Educators.
- 2024 Faculty of Arts and Science Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigenization (EDI-I) Fund: Queering Brass (and Music) Performance Practices with Trash Panda Brass.
Friesen, D. (forthcoming). “Thinking Towards Critical sound and listening pedagogies”. In E. Waterman (Ed.), R. Murray Schafer’s ecologies of music and sound re-examined. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Friesen, D. S. (2024). Critical Sound and Listening Pedagogies: A Collaborative Inquiry with Music Teachers (Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto (Canada))
Friesen, D. & Menard, L. (2024). “The ‘heart and soul’ of music education: Towards sonic egalitarianism in classroom practice.” Visions of Research in Music Education, 46(5).
Friesen, D., & Simon, R. (2021). “Making Fahrenheit 451 ‘come to life’: Sound inquiries with youth and teachers.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 65 (1), 47-54.
Beach, A., Friesen, D., Fraser, K., Moynihan, M., Prosser, L., & Recharte, M. (2020). “Shifting Perspectives in Remote Connection.” Canadian Music Educator, 61(4), 16–21.
Friesen, D. (2017). “Creative Ideas for the Music Classroom: A Case for Letting it Get Noisy.” Canadian Music Educator, 58(2), 11.
Friesen, D. (2015). “The Music Box: Education Out of a Little Chaos.” Canadian Music Educator, 57 (1), 15- 20.
Friesen, D. (2009). That teacher pedestal. In E. Gould, J. Countryman, C. Morton, & L. Stewart-Rose (Eds.), Exploring social justice: How music education might matter (pp. 253–260). Canadian Music Educators’ Association.
- Time Spent Swimming (2022), I’ve Been Picking Caruso’s Brain (2015), Disaster Fantasies (2010) - Selina Martin (bass, double bass, trombone, synth)
- Need to Know (2020) - Lowell Whitty (bass and composer)
- Burning Daylight (2014) – Christine Fellows (double bass, trombone)
- The Motherland (2014), In the Rock Hall (2012), The Land is Wild (2009) - Bidiniband (bass, trombone, voice)
- Ooh! (2014) – The Pinecones (trombone)
- Provincial (2012) – John K. Samson (bass, voice, arranger)
I’ve spent much of my career exploring how we can make music education more inclusive, creative, and connected to the real lives of students and communities. I look forward to learning with and from the amazing people already doing this work at Laurier and in the Kitchener-Waterloo region.
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