The purpose of this study was to examine whether one aspect of conducting technique, the conducting plane, would affect band and/or choral musicians' perceptions of conductor and ensemble expressivity. A band and a choral conductor were each videotaped conducting 1-min excerpts from Morten Lauridsen's "O Magnum Mysterium" while using a…

The service of blacks in the U.S. military can be traced back to the Revolutionary War. However, up to the end of World War I, African Americans in military branches were relegated to cooking and cleaning duties. As the United States prepared to enter World War II, pressure to admit African Americans into full service in the military increased due…

The MacPhail Center for Music Online School Partnerships program aims to increase access to high-quality music education for students who attend schools in Greater Minnesota in order to improve student interest and knowledge in music, and to improve or maintain positive school engagement and non-academic skills. The MacPhail Teaching Artists work…

Inspired by local arts community engagement initiatives and community music interventions internationally, Wits University (in Johannesburg, South Africa) developed a model of service learning that links the intentions, methodologies and purposes of these domains to promote student learning and benefit communities. This paper examines the quality…

This paper examines what goes on in an improvising jazz combo in a secondary school in Scotland, where teaching follows Rogoff's three-stage sociocultural process, moving from an initial apprenticeship model through one of guided participation to one of participatory appropriation. Using a case study research design and interpretative…

Learning implies change. Inside and outside schools, we aim for students to change into people with more skills and knowledge as well as with a growing sense of agency and responsibility. Furthermore, education itself is subject to constant change. In this article, we examine change in 3 case studies in the context of individual music lessons from…

Jazz band directors tend to face a lot of time constraints in readying their ensembles for performance. Sometimes the race to the stage can result in suboptimal playing, a rhythm section that does not quite gel, or soloists who "blow and hope"--that is, fail to put in the appropriate amount of thought before and during their…

Learning improvisation in music is often treated as the process of gaining skills to spontaneously perform within the conventions of a style. Alternatively, learning improvisation can offer musicians a place to explore sound as it happens in free improvisation. Within the school setting, the former approach is commonly used in the jazz programs,…

The saxophone section of a wind ensemble can easily be one of the most frustrating to work with when it comes to producing a clear, characteristic tone. Sometimes, the road to an improved sound can be a long path of daily diligence and practice; however, there are many quicker solutions that will drastically improve a student's tone. This article…

This column offers the personal reflections of the author on being a member of the band Touch, an iPad performing ensemble composed of music education faculty members and doctoral students at the University of South Florida. The ensemble primarily performed its own arrangements of popular music selections from a number of genres including, but not…

A conversation between the Director of the University of Manchester's Science & Engineering Education Research and Innovation Hub and the Education Director of England's Halle Orchestra explores the relationship unfolding between science and music. The interview focuses on synergies between music and science and how the two subjects can…

Whereas adult education used to be the preferred concept for those studying adult music-making, there is now an increasing trend away from this and towards lifelong learning. Uncritically adopting government lifelong learning discourses, however, blurs the line between educational ideals and political ones. Although there may be merit in the…

Education in a contemporary context increasingly requires students to engage with learning technologies. This can present a challenge to both students and teachers who at times struggle to engage with the technical processes involved in navigating these technologies. Outside of formal education settings, on-demand information facilitated through…

This study profiles gender differences in instrumental performance self-efficacy perceptions of high school students (N = 87) over the course of a three-day orchestra festival in which students competed against one another for rank-based seating and then rehearsed and performed as a group. Reported self-beliefs rose significantly for the sample…

We evaluated students' perceptions and reactions to an active learning Karaoke Video project in both a large (104 student) undergraduate class in Natural History of Georgia and a small graduate seminar in Fish Ecology. Undergraduate responses were evaluated with both questionnaires and triangulation interviews and graduate student responses…