Jeffrey Nytch

Hey, look! 2025 is now behind us…and we made it! In addition to our individual trials and triumphs (hopefully you saw more of the latter), many of us also struggled with what my husband likes to call, “General existential doom and gloom”: anxiety about the state of our world and what we — as artists, as educators, as citizens  — can do about it. In addition to this, the year has also been a profound year of positive change and new discoveries for me personally. It’s been quit

When I last posted an edition of “Field Notes,” I was wrapping up my final semester as Director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music at CU-Boulder. Contrary to the belief of countless friends and colleagues who didn’t read their email carefully, I was  not  retiring altogether. (I’ve had a lot of these conversations over the last few months: “Hey, Jeff! How’s retirement? You lucky dog…”  “Oh, I’m not retired.”  “Wait. What?”) I have simply shifted my role to teaching only

“Wait — you have an eclipse on your Birthday ??”  We were sitting on the porch off the main hall at MacDowell, in Peterborough, NH, chatting after dinner, and one of the other Fellows — a Chinese-American poet, and also a dedicated astrologer — was reviewing my natal chart. It was October 14, 2023, the date of an annular solar eclipse. It was also my 59th Birthday. My friend stared at the chart in awe for a few minutes more. “Wow…An eclipse on your Birthday…that’s huge. Somet

I’ve been waffling about the topic for this latest edition of “Field Notes.” Should I observe the 5-year anniversary of the Covid lockdown by reflecting on things artists and arts organizations learned…and opportunities we missed? (Nah: aren’t we all tired of talking about the pandemic??)  Perhaps I should use recent conversations in my corner of academia to once again get on my soapbox regarding the importance of interdisciplinary teaching and research, and the terrible job