Teaching
For ten years, I have served on the composition faculty at The Walden School, an exceptional summer music program with an international reputation for providing creative, rigorous theoretical training and individualized instruction to young musicians, ages 9-18, beginning level to advanced. I have taught intensive five-week courses (equivalent to a semester-length college course) in composition, musicianship (i.e. music harmony, ear training and analysis), orchestration, traditional/experimental notation, composing for the voice, score reading, and more.
While working on my masters at Yale, I was awarded a year-long graduate theory teaching assistantship, which gave me a wonderful opportunity to work with Joan Panetti and explore her unique approach to teaching theory. “Hearing” she called it to refer to the active experience of listening critically to music in real time, as opposed to laboriously dissecting notes on paper long after the vibrations of sound have died away. Not surprisingly (given the shared principals of Joan’s teaching and Walden’s approach), one of Joan’s music teachers was Grace Newsom Cushman, who developed the musicianship course and founded the Junior Conservatory, which became Walden in the early 1970s.
During my many years on faculty at Walden (if you count my years as a student, I have been a part of this school’s community for over twenty-five years), I have enjoyed continuous mentorship in teaching pedagogy from, among others, Leo Wanenchak, Pam Quist and Pat Plude, master teachers with over twenty-five years experience. As at Walden you not only teach, but continue to study teaching as well, faculty take regular workshops on different sections of the musicianship curriculum, and mentor teachers periodically visit your classes and give you one-on-one feedback to help fine-tune your technique.
In recent years, Walden has published The Walden School Musicianship Course: A Manual for Teachers, and established the Teacher Training Institute (TTI), a wonderful pedagogy/idea resource for teachers of all different backgrounds. I have taken one of TTI’s summer workshops, and plan to keep going back for more, as time and resources allow. With music, you just keep on learning your whole life long!
I’m looking forward to planting the musicianship seed in Oregon’s good dirt and seeing what develops. My guess is some more sensitive young musicians will sprout up with good ears and a propensity for picking up a composing pencil as well as their musical instruments.
If you are interested in private/group musicianship and/or composition lessons, please contact me.
