VoE Michael Ibrahim Podcast: The Impact of the Timashev Donation
Michael Ibrahim: One of the monsters that isn't so well known to folks outside of West Virginia is something called the sheepsquatch. It's kind of like a Sasquatch, but a part of its DNA is a sheep. It has white wooly fur with big horns. So I started to do that. I was putting out music as Sheepsquatch. And then there were a couple of situations where people were actually asking if I might perform 
David Staley: Oh wow as Sheepsquatch 
Michael Ibrahim: Yeah. And so my hair was graying, but not enough to naturally look like Sheepsquatch. So, I worked with a costume and design student that just was a fanatic about monsters. And he made a mask using real sheep eyes and the horns lit up. And so I did some performing as Sheepsquatch. So if anybody is going back through my history, that was a very fun project where I was doing EDM under that name the sheepsquatch 
Jen Farmer: From the heart of The Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff with departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics and languages, among many others. The college always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new, now.
David Staley: I'm pleased to be joined today in the ASC Marketing and Communication Studio by Michael Ibrahim, Director of the School of Music at The Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences. As a saxophonist at the heart of New York's contemporary and experimental music scene, he has collaborated with prestigious ensembles such as Ant Music, Either Or, the Fireworks Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Prism Quartet, Red Light New Music, and Wet Ink.
He has performed at many renowned venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, and The Kitchen. Dr. Ibrahim, welcome to Voices. 
Michael Ibrahim: Thanks so much for having me, David. Pleasure to be here. 
David Staley: I have a number of questions tied to your role as director of the School of Music. The first of these is to talk about the Timashev donation that's been so important to the School of Music. But, my first question is, Timashev's degree was in physics, I think. What's his association with music? 
Michael Ibrahim: Yeah, absolutely. And, and thanks again for having me here. And it's a real pleasure and a gift to be able to speak about Timashev and this new building. So just to provide a little bit of context, the building was built and finished in 2022.
So two years ago, and it happens to also be the same time that I started my position. So we're the same age in terms of being Buckeyes. When I was just starting, I learned that I would be welcoming the community and the school into this new building and that it had already been named the Timashev Family Music Buildings. So, so the family part is about the Timashev family. It's not about family music. Sometimes that can be a little confusing for certain people. And the family here really is Angela and Ratmir Timashev. They are a couple who met from Russia here is where they met in Columbus as graduate students at Ohio State.
And so we are an important place for them and dear to their hearts. it's where they fell in love. And so they think incredibly fondly of Ohio State. And I just want to say their generosity is truly incredible, literally unmatched, I think at this point, and the only thing that I can think of that's even more amazing is actually how down to Earth they are.
They're really amazing people, just very comfortable to talk to and clearly very supportive of music in the arts. My first question when I met them was essentially the question we're all wondering: why music? It's a kind of a mixed reason for both of them. For him as a child, he wasn't really given the opportunity as I understand to study music, although his siblings were, and so it was kind of a situation where in the family they were able to give lessons to, I believe it was his older siblings, but when it came time for him, just didn't quite happen.
It and so it was always something that he wanted and loved and appreciated. And his wife Angela is a singer, and they have music going in their home. They have a piano and it's always been a very part to their lives and kind of like the soul of their life. So, in fact, when we had them here on campus for a celebration event, we had learned that the song that they would request on a weekly basis at a club here was the Girl from Ipanema and so, yeah, and so very quickly, we organized an impromptu performance of the Girl from Ipanema during that celebration. So yeah, their gift really, truly is a testament to how important that passion for the arts is, especially among those that have the capacity to give to the arts.
I mean, without that gift, we would be back in the dark old Hughes building that was an elementary school on steroids or something. So, 
David Staley: Nothing against Hughes. I've had the pleasure of going through the building, walk us through the building and tell us what would we see if we were to walk through, if we weren't on an audio meeting like this? 
Michael Ibrahim: Absolutely. So, the main thing when you walk through the building is depending on which entrance you come in, you're along a long corridor, but it's not a closed in hallway that's with a low ceiling. The building is really built beautifully and designed with the idea of air and light and space coming through. So , when you enter the building, first of all, you can see all of College Road right along the way. So immediately you're still a part of the campus. You still feel as though the school is a part of this Arts District, but also one of our main large ensemble rehearsal rooms is directly adjacent to this corridor and it has windows all along it. So there's a bit of a sort of fishbowl effect or a zoo sort of effect where you can see what we're doing.
There's constantly activity: rehearsals, performances, guests and lecturers. So because of how the building was designed, it really feels like there's a lot of activity. It's alive, and there's momentum. So I really think that the design of the building is great in not just being a practical space to technically do things, but it kind of enlivens us.
The other feature I would mention, or I can't not mention is our recital hall. The recital hall hosts 220 people. And again, windows are all along the backside of where the audience sits. It's a very generous space, beautiful and contemporary, where every detail has been taken. So, that space is truly wonderful for, our students to be able to perform on at the end of every semester, every year when they have performances as part of their degrees.
David Staley: Take me into one of these spaces you talked about light and the openness, which is really a terrific feature. But this is after all a building for the School of Music. What are the practical or technical uses of this space? Couldn't a student just use something like my office in Dulles Hall? 
Michael Ibrahim: Well, it depends on whether we want our neighbors to hear what we're doing. So we do have soundproofing in our rooms, and it depends on how each room is going to be utilized. So for example, our drum and our percussion rooms get special soundproofing that's a little bit more enhanced. And then we have our medium level soundproofing. And then for our offices where music might not be made that often, there's more of a normal sort of soundproofing. So that's an important part, just the barrier in between spaces, but another part is also the quality of the sound in the space.
So, how dead it is or how reverberant it is, all of the sort tuning of the room as being a part of an instrument of making music is also very important, and we're continuing to make little adjustments. When you move into a new home, you learn that that there's always something and there's always something also with the new music building.
So we're continuing to refine certain spaces that we might want a little bit drier that we might want to add 
David Staley: Drier?
Michael Ibrahim: Yeah. We'll say drier meaning to have a reverb that's a little bit less, or another way to say it would prefer there to be a little bit less room echo. So, we dry the sound usually by adding padding, kind of like the padding in this sort of sound studio here. 
David Staley: So as you said, you've been here since 2022 from West Virginia University. 
Michael Ibrahim: Yeah. 
David Staley: And you've been very active, I know, in your role as director of School of Music. Tell us about the Global Black Music Studies Initiative that you've helped to launch.
Michael Ibrahim: So happy to speak about that. And what an exciting time for the school. I started in July of 2022 and the provost at the time, Melissa Gilliam, had created this very exciting initiative about enhancing diversity, but also enhancing upon ideas and fields of study and disciplines that weren't already present in the academic units.
And that initiative actually began before July. And one thing that was kind of exciting is when this initiative began and my hire had already taken place, I wasn't yet working, but there was already so much momentum for seeing something like that happen. So very quickly I assembled an ad hoc committee, and I I think there were over 10 people on that.
People wanted to be involved. And so out of that, we created this big proposal, with the initiative to hire a three-person cohort of hip hop scholars. And two of these scholars would have a footprint in the School of Music, and they would all have varying footprints that are kind of shared.
So for example, two of our scholars are in School of Music and the Department of African American Studies and we have a third higher that's in the Department of African American Studies and also Comparative Studies, so we have kind of a three way group that all specialized in a field specifically hip hop studies as it relates to music in a way that wasn't really present here at Ohio State.
There are some scholars here that do terrific work with hip hop, but not particularly just the music aspect. So it's really been an exciting thing for us to branch outside I would say of the Western European tradition, which most music schools generously teach. Jazz obviously has also been a part of music schools for several decades now and more schools are starting to teach popular music.
World music has also had a presence to a certain degree, but bringing in hip hop has been a really exciting point for us, and we're continuing to adapt our curriculums so that hip hop can be a part of all of those programs. 
David Staley: Any other music schools, any other universities doing hip hop studies, or is Ohio State a leader here?
Michael Ibrahim: I would say we're at the forefront. We're not alone. There are some activities happening at to name some of the bigger schools Chapel Hill North Carolina. I think, given our cohort aspect, given our location here in Columbus, a large urban metropolitan center, I think there's a lot of opportunity and possibility here. 
David Staley: Tell about Opus 88 your program engaging with the 88 counties in Ohio. 
Michael Ibrahim: Sure. And that's kind of the next variation of the school, not just in the urban setting, but also as a flagship land grant institution. Back to July of 2022 I was trying to educate myself on the state of Ohio and thinking, how can we be active in all of the counties? I learned that there happened to be 88 counties. There also happens to be 88 keys on a piano. So I thought, okay, we need to do something with this.
And, those that have a similarly cheesy sense of humor were cheering me on. So we look for a name and our wonderful recruitment and admissions coordinator, Tanya Sparks, thought of the idea using the word Opus, a word that starts with O, brilliant idea from Tanya.
And so we went with Opus 88 and I think right now we're a little past 40 in terms of different counties. The most common thing is that we have students performing at a school, but the activity really could be a number of different things. It could be faculty engaging in a library, in a community center.
 But the most common would be an ensemble performing at a school. And it's excellent experience. for us, as well as for those across the state where we can put our students in a leadership setting where we're asking them to go speak about resilience or go speak about what it means to be dedicated in music.
And for them to be just a few years older than some of these high school students is just a great connection to have in place. That's been really exciting. Give us maybe two more years and hopefully we'll be 86, 87, 88. It will be up to those numbers. 
David Staley: Is one goal recruiting students to Ohio State?
Michael Ibrahim: I'd like to think that recruitment is maybe an outcome, but not a goal of it.
It does so happen that our recruitment staff member has been an amazing champion on this, but ideally, I think, as I frame it, I think of it more as engagement in our role with the state. And if students and families tend to think more about music at Ohio State, great, but I try not to think of it as recruitment as the fundamental goal.
 David Staley: I had said earlier that you came most recently from WVU, West Virginia University.. Did you do something similar at West Virginia? 
Michael Ibrahim: Nothing that was this codified, nothing that had a sort of brand or anything like that, but I would say that there was definitely a similarity at heart. West Virginia has many characteristics that are somewhat similar to Ohio in terms of the rural aspect, some of the Appalachian history but West Virginia also has some unique aspects in terms of its economy and some of the more depressed aspects to the state have been really tough for it. So I think somehow because of that there are a good number of faculty that were really charged and championed to do this sort of work. And I would be a part of those trips. And I think for me, it was incredibly fulfilling and just meaningful work. And so when I came here, naturally, it seemed like something that I would want to kind of remix for this state. 
David Staley: You've fostered partnerships with several arts organizations in Columbus. Tell us about some of these partnerships. 
Michael Ibrahim: Yeah, there's so many. And for me, been a really exciting difference in coming from Morgantown, West Virginia, to Columbus is that there is a really thriving community here. I serve on the board for the Columbus music commission, which has been really terrific to work with Bruce Garfield through that.
Who's bringing in different opportunities for artists and brings the community together to try and find more opportunity for our musicians and artists. We try to work with everyone. So with the Columbus Symphony, we host one of their youth symphonies.
They rehearse in our space. So those families of those kids are in our space regularly. Their concerts take place there. We also have a internship through the college's Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme that's with Pro Musica, the chamber orchestra, as they have outreach projects as well.
Then we also work with some of the jazz groups in town as well with Jazz Arts Group and with A Tribe for Jazz. We also work with them on some of their engagement. 
David Staley: Say a little more about Tribe for Jazz. 
Michael Ibrahim: One thing that's just happening right now is they received a grant from the Battelle organization specifically for bringing jazz to afterschool programs and linking that with STEM. So it sounds like a really exciting thing. So they've reached out to us, and we're looking to bring in our students in some of those settings. Those are some of the partnerships we're also taking on a new role with our own creation.
 And that's where we've created a community music school here. This is something that hadn't existed yet that I think probably could have existed 20 or 30 years ago. So it seemed like one of those things, well, this is a no brainer. We should do this. So in January, we started a program where now anyone in Columbus can take music lessons, even if they're not an Ohio State student. So they can come and take lessons in our building. It can be individual, it can be with a group, on a whole variety of instruments. So that's been another way. We're not working with another organization on that to your initial question, but it's kind of in that related work of serving Columbus.
David Staley: Who are the teachers in this program? Are they students are 
Michael Ibrahim: Largely students, so we're rolling it out and growing it we go. And we're starting with students as the teachers. So it's an exciting opportunity for the college students. They're talented, hardworking students, and they're excited to teach individuals that may be picking up an instrument for the first time.
David Staley: Are these like, internships for the students. Is that how it's organized? 
Michael Ibrahim: They're paid as employees. At the head of that program is Angela Heck Mueller, who's been leading that. Ohio State is an enormous institution with a lot of layers. And she's really been terrific in working through all of the layers to get that kind of business operations going for music school.
David Staley: Tell us some other partnerships that you're working on.
Michael Ibrahim: Well, a big area that I think the school is taking on is not just music alone, but music with health. There are a number of things related to this that I could speak about. And it makes a lot of sense when you think about us being campus that has a medical side.
The opportunities are the things that maybe haven't been explored yet. So one first area just to speak about is a professional program, a curriculum that we're looking to roll out for future music students. And that's in the field of music therapy. So 
David Staley: Excellent.
Michael Ibrahim: So yeah, I couldn't be more excited about this. I would say this is definitely in the realm of bringing in hip hop, bringing in a new sort of era of what we can offer. So this coming spring, we'll offer an intro to music therapy, and we're currently searching for a lecturer to teach that class. But I couldn't be more enthusiastic that we're searching for a tenure track hire to lead this whole program, a bachelor of music therapy .Music therapy has its own accreditation, its own certification, and music therapists are not a dime a dozen.
There is a real need for them in many different sort of therapeutic settings, hospitals, hospices rehabilitation places for the really young or those that are at the end of their lives. So we're hoping to get that program off the ground. And, there's so many benefits in just thinking about a program on its own.
But for me, what excites me about this isn't just adding music therapy. It's actually how adding music therapy changes the whole school because then you have composers you have performers, music education folks that are sitting in a classroom next to other future music therapists. So they're thinking about how music can be therapeutic and how music can affect our bodies and our minds.
 I think that will enrich every student that goes through the school. So I'm really excited for that aspect. And one close partner for us on that so far has been the James Cancer Center. There's a wonderful arts manager there, Peggy Kohler, who leads all of the arts programming at the James, and last year, we brought in a lot of students into some of their spaces for performing. And I see that work continuing to build from there. 
David Staley: What drew you to Ohio State?
Michael Ibrahim: There's so many things. In taking any sort of new job, there's always the fear of not knowing the job and not being able to do it. And I think that when this position opened I immediately thought, okay, that's actually something that I think I can do because it seems similar enough to where I was at WVU, but just scaled up in pretty much every way.
And I think there's something about the bravura of Ohio State that is kind of exciting and interesting and I'm into it and I'm not wearing my Block O today, but I wear it I think at least four days of the week. I'm into all that, the community aspect and the sort of other worldly part of what it is to be a Buckeye. So I think that was a draw. I also just know that the school has a history of really exciting things, but it also has the potential, I think, to grow. So I think the fact that the School of Music didn't have music therapy, I viewed as, Hey, that's actually maybe something that I could do there. I think I viewed all of it as opportunity and potential. 
David Staley: So I introduced you as a saxophonist, and I want to begin first of all by asking, so why the saxophone? Did you know from the moment you heard a saxophone, you're going to be a saxophonist? Why saxophone? Why not a piano? Why not clarinet? Why not trumpet? 
Michael Ibrahim: To answer that question honestly, I think we do have to go back to the mind of a person who's in the fifth grade, which is actually probably not that different than a person that's my age right now, but in fifth grade I chose the saxophone because it was shiny and had a lot of buttons. It looked cool. I thought the trumpet didn't have enough.
David Staley: I was a trumpet player. 
Michael Ibrahim: Oh, okay. 
David Staley: For what it's worth. 
Michael Ibrahim: Well, very good. Very good. So yeah, at the time I think I could have named maybe, two saxophonists, their names. I didn't really know a whole lot about it, but I was just I guess attracted to the look or the character somehow of it, maybe because Lisa Simpson played it.
So I really didn't know a whole lot, but it was definitely a snowball effect and one thing led to the other and continue to take lessons and I dabble in a number of other instruments. But saxophone really has been the heart of it for me.
David Staley: You've also done some work with electronic dance music. 
Michael Ibrahim: Mm-Hmm. 
David Staley: And I have to ask you about this. How does a saxophonist end up in EDM?
Michael Ibrahim: Sure, sure. So that's a bit of a fun story. When I was transitioning into administration, I knew that life would be a lot busier in terms of evening concerts and general amount of communication and bandwidth and all that. And we also had a saxophone professor that was not me. And so I kind of took the time to kind of step away from the saxophone so that the new saxophone professor could, truly be in the limelight, and I wasn't lurking or anything like that. So I really took some time away from the saxophone.
But I also had some skills with using a computer with electronic music and so forth. And so I started to just make a little bit of electronic music for fun. And it was just kind of my little outlet, my little musical therapy for myself. And that snowball effect kind of came in again, and I started making more stuff. 
I thought maybe I should post some of this on the Internet. Why not? So I started to think about that. And I thought to post this as Michael Ibrahim just doesn't seem that interesting.
So I thought I need to do something more with this. And EDM already has a history of individuals that are hidden where the artist is masked or is unknown. Daft Punk, Marshmello, MF Doom these are artists where you don't really see their face. 
David Staley: Right. They wear masks or. 
Michael Ibrahim: Exactly. So, I thought, okay, maybe I should do something kind of like that. And I thought, okay, what am I going to do? A big part of the culture in West Virginia is around folklore and specifically around what's called cryptids or monsters. You've probably heard of some of them, like the Grafton Monster or Mothman. Maybe you've heard of Mothman? 
David Staley: I have indeed. 
Michael Ibrahim: Yeah. There's a beer named after Mothman. One of the monsters that isn't so well known to folks outside of West Virginia is something called the sheepsquatch. Yeah. Who knew? And it's kind of like a Sasquatch, but a part of its DNA is a sheep.
 It has white wooly fur with big horns. I remember I was looking up these different monsters, maybe a monster thing would work. And I found a comic book artist that made this amazing picture of the sheepsquatch. So I wrote the comic book artist and he said, yeah, you can use that for your work that you put online. So I started to do that. I was putting out music as Sheepsquatch. And then there were a couple of situations where people were actually asking if I might perform 
David Staley: Oh wow as Sheepsquatch 
Michael Ibrahim: Yeah. And so you know, my hair was graying, but not enough to naturally look like Sheepsquatch. So, I worked with a costume and design student that just was a fanatic about monsters. And he made a mask using real sheep eyes and the horns lit up. And so I did some performing as Sheepsquatch. So if anybody is, going back through my unique parts of my history, that was a very fun project where I was doing EDM under that sort of name of the Sheepsquatch. 
David Staley: Tell me I can go to YouTube this afternoon and find this. 
Michael Ibrahim: You could, YouTube or Instagram. I think there's one track on Spotify that I released with an alum of WVU who coincidentally was the singer behind the kids show Paw Patrol. 
David Staley: Oh, yeah, sure. 
Michael Ibrahim: So anyway, yeah. So that was a little bit of a fun project for me. I look back fondly to, when I'm scrolling through my photos, it does feel like a past life in some ways already. 
David Staley: As you say you're an administrator now and happy that you're here at Ohio State. I wondered if you would end by telling us your vision for the School of Music.
Michael Ibrahim: Yeah, happy to chat about that. Vision is one of those things where I think if I spoke too much about my vision, it wouldn't be a vision that's going to work. Before I get into anything on a detailed level, I think to say that a part of my job is to figure out what's the shared vision of everyone and so that isn't just faculty. I think, finding a vision that will work with staff who are necessary for the operations of a school for a vision for students, what their needs are, how those needs are changing. Also our recent alumni have amazing insights on what we did right and what we could do better.
 One thing I've really learned is that at Ohio State donors have really incredible things to offer and ideas and insights. So I think capturing a shared vision is really important. I think most of the things that I've mentioned kind of so far, like Opus 88, community engagement, hip hop music therapy are all things that I would say the consensus of those constituents are really in love with, I would say I'd say that if I was to go further into things where I see more areas for us to grow. I think probably more related to breadth. So 
David Staley: Say a little more. 
Michael Ibrahim: For example, I think there's a way for us to add in broader array of studies around music without taking away from what we already do. So that, might include maybe even other genres in addition to hip hop. We may find ourselves doing more with technology.
 I'm really excited about a hire that we have coming in for this fall. Her name is Tina Talon, where she's among the world's experts on music and AI. 
David Staley: Interesting. 
Michael Ibrahim: So I think that bringing in technology and AI could be in another important realm for us that we're really just growing to where I think we need to be.
The last sort of thought, I guess, on vision is music schools and certainly ours have for a long time thought about not only thought about, but tried to uphold what they call excellence, doing the very best that you can do and aiming to push that beyond and beyond.
And a lot of it does come from a performance mentality of how can we perform at the very highest standard? And a lot of that also links to what's, called a music conservatory. So music schools that are specifically performance oriented are really oriented around that. I don't see us ever letting go of musical excellence, but it does seem to me like we're kind of at a point where they're starting to be some negative associations a little bit sometimes with musical excellence in that it's not always thinking about the world around the person that is trying to be excellent. And so I think there might be something more about taking what we do, not forgetting about musical excellence, but maybe something like more like musical distinction, something about thinking about how what we do is important or what we can do is unique as opposed to the best which might have a bit of a superiority complex or something like that. So anyway, I went a little bit in the clouds on the distinction piece there. 
David Staley: Vision is about clouds. 
Michael Ibrahim: Yeah. 
David Staley: Michael Ibrahim, thank you.
Michael Ibrahim: Pleasure to be with you.
Jen Farmer: Voices of excellence is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer.