Jazz pianist says Kirby’s bullying drove her from Winnipeg
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/11/2017 (2323 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Jazz pianist and composer Michelle Gregoire grew up in Manitoba and had her professional career here for decades until a fellow jazz musician bullied her so much that she says she was forced to move to Calgary.
Disgraced former University of Manitoba jazz studies professor Steve Kirby was the bully, she says.
“Clearly it was bullying,” Gregoire said on Friday.
“My impression was my gender was an issue for him. He clearly saw me as a female… it was clear to me he could not look past my gender and that may be why he bullied me.
“I’m an accomplished musician. Maybe it was hard for him to accept it. But it wasn’t a good environment for me. It wasn’t possible for me to continue there. I had to move to Calgary.
“It was the right move.”
As first reported in the Free Press in September, Kirby quietly retired from the U of M in June, after 14 years in the university’s jazz studies program, after allegations of sexual harassment came forward.
Shortly after, it was learned Kirby had been hired by the prestigious Berklee School of Music to teach music composition, but after the Free Press contacted the school he was suspended pending an investigation.
When that investigation wrapped up a few days ago, Berklee fired Kirby and admitted it should have contacted not just Kirby’s references, but also official sources including the U of M’s human resources department.
“That is a mistake,” Berklee president Roger Brown said during a meeting with hundreds of students at the school earlier this week. “We should probably do that going forward.”
Gregoire said she thinks Kirby began picking on her because he thought she was younger and more vulnerable.
“Maybe he felt threatened because I could see through him and see what his experience was. I was a 38-year-old person with three jazz degrees.”
When asked what she thought of Kirby’s jazz chops, Gregoire declined to answer, saying she wanted to continue to focus on what he did to her and others.
Gregoire’s not the only musician who says they were bullied by Kirby. Last month Daniel Jordan, a member of the Winnipeg folk trio Red Moon Road, said he was also bullied by Kirby while he was taking music at the university. He has now packed up his U of M music degree and mailed it back to the institution because it hadn’t properly apologized to the female students who were harassed by Kirby.
“He insulted, swore at and threatened me,” Jordan said. “He publicly mocked and humiliated me.”
Jordan said Kirby once took “the sticks out of my hand, in full view of a room full of people, as I was playing, to impersonate and mock my playing.” He said the former professor then threatened him.
“But this isn’t about me — it’s about what happened to so many of my fellow female colleagues,” Jordan said. “It is silence that allows these really tired cliches to continue.”
In Jordan’s letter to the university, he wrote: “I truly hope that one day you find the courage to take a stand against sexual harassment and systemic abuse of power. Until then, I remain ashamed to be your alumnus, devoid of respect for you or your institution.”
Gregoire, 51, lived here when she began her music studies at age five, won a national music competition in Toronto when she was 14, and began playing professionally here at age 17 at Le 100 Nons. She came back to live here after getting a BA in jazz music in the prestigious program at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and a masters of music degree in jazz at Florida State University. She was one of the jazz ensemble instructors at the University of Manitoba in the mid 1990s before the current jazz program was created. Her self-named quintet has opened for several prominent jazz musicians including Branford Marsalis.
Gregoire’s relatives are still here, but her professional life is now more in Calgary than it is here. She is currently teaching jazz piano on the faculty of Calgary’s Ambrose University.
Gregoire is in Winnipeg this weekend playing on Sunday with the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra at its Canada 150 concert at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Gregoire said there was nothing sexual in the comments or bullying Kirby committed against her. She said much of the time it was character assassination, where he would tell somebody in the jazz community an untruth about her, with it sometimes getting back to her. Other times, he belittled her in person.
Gregoire said she never went public with what Kirby did to her, even in recent weeks when it became known that he had quietly retired from his 14-year career at the U of M after a female student complained to the university he had sexually harassed her. A later investigation determined the student’s allegations “had merit”.
But now that Kirby had lost his job at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, after reporters here alerted that institution about the sexual harassment allegations, Gregoire wanted to speak up.
“I felt horrible when I heard he had been hired by Berklee,” she said.
“It was five minutes where I questioned everything about me. I thought I must be completely wrong about him. But then I realized something’s wrong because of what had happened here.
“It was just unbelievable. But now I understand and now there is justice.”
Gregoire said she went to the U of M’s dean of music about her concerns about Kirby, in 2011 when she was moving to Calgary, but she was told he was already a tenured professor.
“It breaks my heart more women got hurt,” she said.
Gregoire said she’s hoping what finally happened to Kirby helps others in future.
“I want to educate people about bullying in the work place,” she said.
“People like this will pick on what they can, whether it is race, gender or something else. They’ll find a way to pick on people. I want us to learn from this.”
kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Kevin Rollason
Reporter
Kevin Rollason is one of the more versatile reporters at the Winnipeg Free Press. Whether it is covering city hall, the law courts, or general reporting, Rollason can be counted on to not only answer the 5 Ws — Who, What, When, Where and Why — but to do it in an interesting and accessible way for readers.