Although he is little recognized today, the English composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852 – 1924) was one of the most prominent musicians in the English-speaking world at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and he had considerable influence on the work of many composers and musicians whose work is better known. […]
Off The Podium
Off The Podium: Wholehearted Attention
For Off The Podium this week, please check out this repost of Wholehearted Attention, which will be the basis of a FREE talk presented by the Richmond Symphony School of Music, featuring a discussion with: Dr. Ronald Crutcher, President, University of Richmond Alex Laing, Principal Clarinet, Phoenix Symphony and Walter Bitner (yours truly) Thursday, November […]
Off The Podium: The Rhinoceros
Why you shouldn’t always tell your students the truth For more than half of my teaching career, I taught music & performing arts at elementary or K-8 schools – six of these schools in all, with a wide range of approaches to education between them. One common aspect among all my experiences at these schools, […]
Off The Podium: Trust
This article is a companion to my article Wholehearted Attention. It’s generally accepted that one of the goals of education – beyond the attainment of specific content objectives – is to instill in the child a love for learning. It has been my experience however, that a love for learning is part of a child’s […]
Off The Podium: Inspiration, Part 1
In the contemporary climate of data-driven education, you don’t hear much about inspiration in the popular rhetoric about music education and its role and purpose in the lives of children. But in fact the music teacher’s most important responsibility is to inspire her students. Inspiration is difficult to assess and, if acknowledged at all, often […]
Off The Podium: Summer 2020
Saturday was the first day of summer, and Sunday was Father’s Day. There is no doubt about it: summer is here and it promises to be a long, hot one. The spring of 2020 brought calamitous societal changes: the first global pandemic in a century; the greatest economic crash since the depression nearly a century […]