Good as Gould

James Wright, music professor, was a featured interviewee in the new feature film Genius Within:The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Whitepines Pictures). Wright can be heard commenting throughout the film.

He was also involved in a discussion panel, together with film-makers Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont, following the Ottawa premiere at the National Arts Centre, February 3. For those who missed the recent screening at the Mayfair Theatre, the documentary will also appear on BRAVO, TVO, the Knowledge Network and the Biography Channel. Broadcast in the U.S. on PBS in early February, the film has also been picked up in Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands. 

Wright is an avid fan of Gould and taught the first graduate course in Canada that focused solely on Gould and his music entitled Gouldian Perspectives on Music and Culture.

The first time Wright listened to a recording of Gould, he was enthralled. “I was completely transformed. Gould’s performance was extraordinary in its nuance and perfection, but this was not just music. It was something more, something transcendent, something wonderful beyond words.”

While completing his PHD at McGill University, Wright’s dissertation on Schoenberg and Wittgenstein was awarded the Governor-General’s Gold Medal, the first time in McGill University’s history that this distinction has been conferred upon a musicologist.

His primary research areas encompass music philosophy and aesthetics, music perception, 20th-century music history, post-tonal music theory and analysis, dance and music, and the history of music theory. He is also known as a composer of numerous published choral works, books and essays.

You can hear Wright commenting throughout the following movie trailer:  http://glenngouldmovie.com/.