music education

Thanks to a recent announcement on the Gender Research in Music Education list I found out about a great new resource which will feature and celebrate a woman instrumentalist twice a month. Created by Susan Fleet, this website offers students a great way to learn more about women instrumentalists throughout history. I remember my first year of teaching when one of the first things I hung up on my wall was a New York Times article about percussionist Susie Ibarra… Read More »Celebration of Women Instrumentalists

Congratulations to Daniel Truemen and Perry Cook for their Mobile Musical Networks project as well as the other winners of the HASTAC Digital Media & Learning Grant Competition! The following is a description of the Mobile Musical Networks project: Project Description: Mobile Musical Networks will build an expressive mobile musical laboratory for exploring new ways of making music with laptops and local-area-networks. Students will collaborate in designing these technologies. In the process, they will learn about a variety of subjects,… Read More »Congratulations HASTAC Digital Media & Learning Grant Winners! Another look at technology based ensembles!

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 after providing details which will end up in the lyrics of the song. You can listen to a short program featuring some of Dargel’s past commissions… Read More »Commission (or Compose) A Love Song!

Prior to being a full time student, when I was teaching in a public school, I remember being very frustrated with my lack of access to various music research journals. There was no way I could afford subscriptions to the wide variety of journals I now read and downloading one article could cost up to $40! (If you don’t believe me try checking it out yourself!) While those of us at universities have almost unlimited access to countless online journals,… Read More »Open Access Journal News

While watching Super Bowl XLII I was thinking about the role music played during commercials and the game. While it was interesting to think about the particular choices of music during commercials, I got the biggest kick from the “Mr. Oboe” commercial featuring Ephraim Salaam and Chester Pitts who, according to the commercial plays (or played) the oboe. While some might be upset that the narrative of the commercial could be read as saying that playing football is a more… Read More »Super (Bowl) Oboe (Ad)