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The Ensemble seeks to connect and inform all people who are committed to ensemble music education for youth empowerment and social change.

SIMM: An International Research Platform for Music’s Role in Social and Community Work

03-02-2022

We came to understand that part of the explanation for the relative lack of research could be found in exaggerated rhetoric and redemptionist discourse about the power of music. In addition, many people seemed to think it was simply not necessary to do research on something that is already considered obvious. (My colleagues and I sometimes encountered such reactions in relation to our own scholarly work.) Fortunately, this has started to change recently, and more research projects are now being undertaken in this field.

Finding Harmony in Chennai and Delhi

03-02-2022

In India’s most disadvantaged communities, musicianship is not always encouraged. Domestic violence is not uncommon in some homes; in others, girls are not allowed to sing due to household chores. Some families simply don’t like their children singing. And yet many of these very same communities have produced the members of the NalandaWay Foundation’s Children’s Choir.

GLP Imagined Community Concert: TEN Years of Lullabies—A Celebration

02-16-2022

As Global Leaders cohort members, we have learned that a good teaching artist engages audience members in their own communities, creating magical moments that can endure and inspire. With that in mind, we set out to propose a community concert for Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project.

At David’s Harp, Transparency Leads the Way—and Mentorship Follows

02-02-2022

We adults are rarely transparent with young people. This is true for several reasons—we want to respect their boundaries; we need to maintain our authority in the room; we make ourselves malleable at the expense of honesty—but the biggest might be because it’s so easy to screw up.

‘Controlled Chaos’: In Soma, New Techniques Produce Stronger Rehearsals

02-02-2022

When children do this for the first time, they often begin with uncertainty. But they quickly realize that they are hearing the music in a different way. They also come to understand that each of them has an important role to play in taking responsibility and shaping the music.

Is Culture the Missing Piece in Our Quest for a Greener and Humane Recovery? Five Ways the Cultural Sector Steps In

02-02-2022

Why does a composer venture into the Arctic? Perhaps because it is one of the places our global climate emergency is on clearest display. Auerbach’s collaborator, Enric Sala, the founder of National Geographic’s Pristine Seas Project, observed that if you look at our Earth from space, the Arctic appears as its heart, a white heart expanding and contracting. The expansions are getting noticeably smaller every year.

Unpacking AIM’s Five Pillars of Practice

02-02-2022

Our five Pillars of Practice not only articulate areas in which our Firebird Fellows commit to stretch with their students. They also underpin AIM’s approach to teacher training. Teachers need and deserve to participate in empowering experiential learning that informs how they support their students.

Ghetto Classics Dance, in Nairobi, Kenya

02-02-2022

On the crowded roads of Korogocho, with its 300,000 inhabitants on 1.5 sq. km, its tin homes with no running water and open sewage, and its backdrop of Dandora (an immense, ever-growing, and constantly burning mountain of garbage), one can scarcely imagine encountering a center filled with live arts. But that is the home of Ghetto Classics, where every corner, every room vibrates with music—from Chopin to Tanzanian composer Adam Salim.

AIMing Forward: Introducing the Academy for Impact through Music

01-05-2022

The global field of music for social change is committed, smart, resilient, and brimming with talented teachers, administrators, and students—that’s a lot of assets! But it isn’t organized to learn well and get better as a field. Indeed, as I traveled during the past decade to 25 countries to observe good programs in action, I consistently heard that their two greatest challenges were finances and faculty. These problems haven’t been getting better.

Korea’s Orchestra of Dream Celebrates Ten Years with “I Contact”

01-05-2022

KACES wrestled with the best way to plan the celebration, an important milestone for us. Ironically, minimizing human contact became the primary mission for a concert designed to bring people together. We eventually came up with the idea of a contactless concert and began putting into action a plan unlike any we had tried before.

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