Catalysts & Connections - Evan Tobias

Since for many, Valentine’s Day encourages expressions of love, why not address music’s power to do just this? Countless composers and songwriters have expressed their love for another or tried to capture the concept or feelings of love in their music. Contemporary composers such as Corey Dargel allow you to commission a love song […]

 

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I always enjoyed having my students create ringtones and discuss the musical ideas they came up with and decisions they made. One of the aspects of the process I focused on was how to compose music for such a short amount of time. Robert Voisey wrote about this topic in an interesting article […]

When I worked on a “Copyrights and Wrongs” project with my 7th grade general music students several years ago, one of the various issues we focused on was how they would choose to treat their own music in terms of rights management. We discussed various positions and potential pros and cons of copyrighting or applying […]

Listening is probably one of the most important concepts that our students can learn and engage in. When asking our students to listen, whether to music, sound or each other, do we ask them to listen deeply? This is exactly what composer and performer Pauline Oliveros asks of us. Oliveros has spent years developing her […]

While music educators are starting to bring the talented young performers on “From The Top” to the attention of their students it would be equally beneficial to make our students aware of composers their age. Belinda Reynolds recently wrote about an ensemble consisting solely of teenage performers and composers called “Formerly Known As Classical“.
NPR […]

With the summer here and a ton of links I have bookmarked to write about over the past few months it’s time for another music education mixtape……
Track 1 - Not all of our top percussionists will end up as principal percussionists in symphony orchestras, and even those that do might end up leaving to […]

I just found out, thanks to Justin Davidson, about the 5th year anniversary of the WNYC radio program Soundcheck. Congratulations are definitely due to John Schaefer (the host) and the Soundcheck crew, for an excellent radio show. I have Soundcheck to thank for inspiring several general music lessons I taught and can think of countless […]

We often talk about the importance of music’s expressive qualities or how we want our students to be able to expressive themselves with and through music. Sometimes we forget, however the role that censorship plays in people expressing themselves through music across the world. For many students the first thing that comes to mind […]

It is important to speak with students about how music plays a role in community and how it may vary depending on where one might live. While people often think of jazz or dixieland as strong musical elements of the New Orleans community they might not immediately think about the importance of school marching bands. […]

Besides being a great resource for information on music and composers, the Online Conservatory (a project of Northeastern University and the Boston Symphony Orchestra) serves as a possible model for the next generation of concert notes. While many music teaches have their students work on concert notes for programs, the use of multimedia resources could […]