Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Art Of Sustaining Orchestras Through Intentional Educational Experiences, Kimberly Souther

Dissertations, 2020-current

The purpose of this study is to identify the most current and successful advances in audience engagement that champion connection and result in sustainability through purposeful educational experiences.

The Symphony Orchestra currently serves an audience which represents a multiplicity of perspectives, background, and understanding. In an era of expanded canon and outreach to local communities, the orchestra must acknowledge that change is necessary if we are to truly create fulfilling experiences for our listeners. Unfortunately, many orchestras fail to connect their outreach to the concert hall, woefully categorizing their patrons into pre-determined subsets. What if all patrons were trusted with …

The Dilemma Of Empty Halls, Joanna Lauer

Musical Offerings

Today, live classical concert attendance is low, a fact which threatens the careers of professional musicians. This paper examines recent statistics of classical concert attendance, theories as to why attendance rates are low, marketing methods for target audiences, and finally, recommendations to solve the dilemma of empty concert halls. To encourage concert attendance, classical music must be tastefully marketed to present-day audiences through the experience of technically excellent, musical, and interesting live performances. Ultimately, the relationship between art and its audience (the consumer) reveals that the key to the dilemma is the audience.

Student Identity In The Secondary Orchestra Classroom: An Ethnographic Study, Kelton Burnside

Music Theses and Dissertations

Identity formation, as a critical process during adolescence, has been found to impact the musical and non-musical lives of students. As students rise to secondary education in the United States, they are navigating complex intersections of identity and the presentation of those identities within complex social environments. Marginalized communities are navigating many of these identities with a lack of support from those in their lives, whether from family, friends, peers, teachers, coaches. The historic underrepresentation of people of color, women, and LGBTQIA+ individuals in the Western Classical Tradition adds another layer of complexity to student identity in the orchestra classroom. …

Hailey's Hearing Aids, Hailey Marie Garcia

Whittier Scholars Program

Individuals from the deaf and hard-of-hearing community are likely to experience more anxiety and depression due to defective cognitive, social, communicational, and emotional skills (Azizi et al., 2019). The word “disability” is embedded with historical negative connotations with phrases such as “deaf and dumb” because if they were deaf or mute then they were automatically labeled as inferior (Horovitz, 2007). Since the 18th century, the DHH community has been seen as incapable, even inhuman, hence the development of emotional deficiencies that bleed into one’s perception of society and their self esteem (Gallaudet, 1886).

How do you navigate a hearing world …

Culturally Responsive Teaching And Music Education, Katie Johnson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The United States’ music culture is predominantly focused on the Western music tradition. Yet, the population in the United States is wildly diverse and continues to become even more so at a rapid rate. Because of this, culturally relevant teaching has become an increasingly discussed topic in music education. Why do some music educators feel out of place with music outside of the classical tradition? It can be traced backed to the Eurocentrism of music schools in the United States. Music schools focus primarily on the classical Western music realm, including topics such as music theory, socially accepted ensembles and …