Dr. Cory Meals, Assistant Professor of Music Education at the University of Houston, was the 2025 featured presenter for the Graduate Research Forum at the Ohio Music Education Association (OMEA) Professional Development Conference. Dr. Meals presented two studies highlighting composer diversity in secondary ensemble lists. Analyses revealed an…

The history of female piano teachers, especially those working with children, remains largely unstudied. Estelle Philleo (1880-1936) is one example from the early 20th century who specialized in group lessons for beginners. A New Woman who never married, she began as a junior piano teacher at the Michigan Female Seminary before graduating in 1902.…

In this paper we discuss the musical work of classical composer Benjamin Britten as a lasting legacy for public music education. Our starting point is the contemporary urgency to rethink both public music education in general, and the public-educational significance of Western classical music in particular, in the face of the dual threats posed by…

Music students, their teachers, composers, and school communities experience deep, long-lasting growth in music-making and artistic perspective when provided with opportunities to engage in the commissioning of new musical works in conjunction with composer residencies. Through consideration of relevant literature and case-study examination, the…

It can be difficult to navigate the tasks of repertoire selection and part assignments in a way that produces a successful performance product while also being educationally beneficial to all students. However, researchers have explored methods of ensuring these goals through repertoire selection. In this article, I present ideas for how educators…

The first Turkish musicians who chose composing as a profession were called "The Turkish Five". These composers, listed by their date of birth, were: Cemal Resit Rey, Hasan Ferit Alnar, Ulvi Cemal Erkin, Ahmet Adnan Saygun and Necil Kazim Akses. These composers squeezed the 500 year music culture of Western music into 30-40 years and…

Playing video games is one of the most popular leisure activities across the world. Video game music (VGM) is a musical art form prevalent in popular culture, and there is potential to use it for the music education of students. Using informal music learning (Green, 2002) and online participatory culture (Jenkins, 1992/2013) theories as grounds…

My string quartet, "Out of the Snowstorm, an Owl" was begun in 2014, but personal circumstances delayed its completion until 2017. It received its premiere at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2018, performed by the Brodick Quartet. In the present inquiry, I will explain how this music was created in response to the transformation…

Scott Joplin was an African American composer and pianist of singular merit and influence. This article is the second in a three-part series considering the biographical, artistic, and cultural contexts of Joplin's life and work. "King of Ragtime Composers," focuses on Scott Joplin's artistic processes, including his structuring of…

Scott Joplin (1868-1917) was an African American composer and pianist of singular merit and influence. Academic interest in Joplin has increased in recent years, leading to new discoveries about the composer's activities, yet teaching materials have not been updated at the same pace as 21st-century findings. Joplin was an entrepreneur, a…

Much like an effective speaker, a flexible musician is competent across multiple settings. The sociolinguistic theory of code-switching can be a useful tool to better understand how musicians acquire a set of skills and knowledge to support music-making in a range of activities in and outside of school and throughout society. In this article,…

This article is part of an ongoing series by the authors and the Deep Play Research Group, which focuses on the intersection of creativity and technology in education. In this article, Dr. Anthony Brandt, professor of composition and theory at Rice University shares his thoughts about the study of creativity. He uses his experiences as a musician…

Scott Joplin was an African American composer and pianist of singular merit and influence. This article is the final entry in a three-part series considering the biographical, artistic, and cultural contexts of Joplin's life and work and their use in K-12 general music education. "Ragtime Spaces" focuses on cultural globalization and the…

As musicians, we have been taught to idolize certain figures in music history. These individuals are considered untouchable, unassailable, and unquestionably brilliant. This practice is increasingly evident in jazz. Figures like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis have all undergone a virtual apotheosis. While there is…

This article presents the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) as an historical educator in the context of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures on Poetry at Harvard University (1939-1940), published as "The Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons." As music professors at North American institutions of Christian Higher Education, the…