I am often inspired by news items to imagine musical possibilities that could play out in varied teaching and learning contexts. A recent NPR story on pianist Anthony de Mare’s commissioning 36 composers to re-work songs by Steven Sondheim caught my attention in this way.
Rather than focus on the story (which is fabulous by the way) or the Liaisons project itself, I’m more interested here in making a larger point about curriculum and the ways we do or do not blur boundaries between musics and ways of engaging with music.
Innovative educators can take a news item or aspect of music like this, build connections across eras and genres, link to aspects of curriculum, and then invite people to engage in interesting related projects. Unfortunately, many curricula (intended, taught, and experienced) are designed and enacted in ways that isolate and compartmentalize music and forms of musical engagement.
For instance, consider how many college music courses organize “content” chronologically as if one needs to experience and learn music of the 18th century before music of the 19th or 21st century. Or consider perspectives where only one type of music is addressed in a curricular context at the exclusion of all others. While there are/may be benefits to such curricular organization, this type of compartmentalization can have a powerful impact on how K-12 educators structure curriculum. Many music educators model their own curricula on the structures they experienced while in music school.
Why limit students’ musical experience in these ways? How might we imagine other ways of organizing courses and programs to experience and engage with music?
Consider listening (or reading) the NPR story ‘Re-Imagining Sondheim’: A Pianist And His Peers Deconstruct The Master’ and spending some time with the Liaisons Project as starting points and springboards to imagine any number of related ways to engage young people musically. Now imagine how rich this might be if students experienced a related project through multiple (often overlapping) musical roles such as performer, musicologist, theorist, composer, critic, philosopher, fan, listener among others. Let’s do some re-imagining of what is possible and what might occur in K-12 music programs.
The following questions and activities are designed to help students anticipate the performance and then to build on their impressions and interpretations after attending the theatre. While most of the exercises provide specific instructions, please feel free to adapt these activities to accommodate your own teaching strategies and curricular needs.