[Originally posted August, 2007 & Updated Dec, 2016] Pauline Oliveros’s Inspiration The wonderful composer and performer Pauline Oliveros, recently passed away leaving a legacy of music, ideas, and thinking about sound and people. I first came across Pauline Oliveros during my…
Thanks to NPR’s The New & The Next I recently found out about Dr. Wesley Watkins’s work on the Jazz and Democracy project. According to the project’s website: The Jazz & Democracy Project® (J&D) uses jazz as a metaphor to…
Throughout the years I’ve found Bang on A Can to be an inspiration for music education. Whether their flexible ensemble structures, their hyphenated musicianship in terms of many members being both composers and performers, their people’s commissioning fund and a…
I just returned from the 2009 Arizona Music Educators Association In-Service (conference). I had a great time attending sessions, and meeting many wonderful people. At the conference it was announced that MENC has started the following petition, available online: Be…
Anytime I hear about a music class, whether in K-12 schools or the university level, that makes use of improvisation and composition I get excited. I was happy to read Scott Spiegelberg’s recent post “Teaching Creativity” (via his excellent “Musical…