Faculty Publications

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  Promising Practices in 21st Century Music Teacher Education

  Michele E. Kaschub and Janice P. Smith

  Music teacher education is under heavy criticism for failing to keep pace with the changing needs and interests of 21st century learners. Technological innovations, evolving demographics in the school age population, and students' omnipresent access to music and music making all suggest that contemporary teaching and learning occurs in environments that are much more complex than those of the 19th century that served as music education's primary model. This book surveys emerging music and education landscapes to present a sampling of the promising practices of music teacher education that may serve as new models for the 21st century. Contributors explore the delicate balance between curriculum and pedagogy, the power structures that influence music education at all levels, the role of contemporary musical practices in teacher education, and the communication challenges that surround institutional change. Models of programs that feature in-school, out-of-school and beyond school contexts, lifespan learning perspectives, active juxtapositions of formal and informal approaches to teaching and learning, student-driven project-based fieldwork, and the purposeful employment of technology and digital media as platforms for authentic music engagement within a contemporary participatory culture are all offered as springboards for innovative practice.

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  Composing Our Future: Preparing Music Educators to teach Composition

  Michele E. Kaschub PhD and Janice P. Smith

  In order to prepare pre-service teachers and meet the needs of practitioners in the field, music teacher educators need resources to guide the development of curriculum, specific courses, professional development workshops, and other environments where composition education can begin, grow, and flourish. With chapters ranging from practical information to solid theory to useful best practice examples, Composing Our Future offers fresh insight into composition in music education from authors who are directly engaged in this work.

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  Minds on Music: Composition for Creative and Critical Thinking

  Michele Kaschub and Janice Smith

  This textbook enhances preservice and practicing music educators' understanding of ways to successfully engage children in music composition. It offers both a rationale for the presence of composition in the music education programand a thorough review of what we know of children's compositional practices to date. Minds On Music offers a solid foundation for planning and implementing composition lessons with students in grades PreK-12.

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  In Endless Song/Be Anxious for Nothing

  Robert Russell

  The musicians of the USM Chamber Singers represent the most outstanding singers at the University. Chosen through a careful audition process and committed to choral excellence, these undergraduate students have accepted a responsibility for musical distinction through a focus on warmth of tone, precise intonation, and the artistry of understanding the nuance of text. Throughout the northern New England region the Chamber Singers have performed a diverse repertory centered on a cappella literature of the renaissance era and the twentieth century and music of various world cultures. In May 1999 the ensemble toured Europe, singing in some of the most beautiful churches of western Europe, including a performance at Notre Dame in Paris and service music for Sunday Mass at the Karlskirche in Vienna. The singers received wide acclaim in April 2000 for a performance of the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein with the Portland Symphony Orchestra. The ensemble toured Ireland, Wales, and England in May 2002 and are planning a third tour in 2005.

  More information about the USM School of Music may be found at:

  http://www.usm.maine.edu/music

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  Bright Journeys

  Robert Russell

  Music CD: University of Southern Maine Chamber Singers

  Robert Russell, professor and director of choral music at the University of Southern Maine, has developed a reputation for choral excellence throughout New England for his work with the University choral program, his leadership as a music director of The Choral Art Society, and his guest conducting of festival choruses.

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  Wrapped in Song, A Christmas Portrait

  Robert Russell

  The singers in the USM Chamber Singers represent the most outstanding vocal performers at the University of Southern Maine. Chosen through a careful audition process, the singers rehearse two and a half hours each week. Committed to choral excellence, these students have accepted a responsibility to musical distinction through a focus on warmth of tone, precise intonation, and the artistry of understanding the nuance of text. The Chamber Singers perform a diverse repertory centered on a cappella literature of the Renaissance era and the twentieth century. Robert Russell, professor of music and music director of Portland's Choral Art Society, is the director of choral music at the University of Southern Maine.

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  Crown Point

  Jerry L. Bowder PhD

  J. L. Bowder

  Crown Point for Winds and Percussion (1990)

  1. 1991 Reading Session

  2. 1998 Concert

  The University of Southern Maine Concert Band

  Peter Martin, Conductor

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  University of Southern Maine Concert Band & Chorale

  Peter Martin and Robert Russell

  VOCAL MUSIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MAINE

  The University Chorale, an ensemble of music majors and other University students, performs a wide variety of music from all historical periods. The Chorale offers singers instruction that will enable them to sing a broad spectrum of choral music expressively and with musical understanding. In recent years the Chorale has sung with the Portland Symphony Orchestra and with the Elmer Iseler Singers.

  Students have further singing opportunities in Chamber Singers, Opera Workshop, and in vocal ensembles that include madrigal singers, jazz choir, early music ensembles, and barbershop quartets. Members of the Chamber Singers principally sing a capella repertoire from the Renaissance and Twentieth Century and masterworks from the Classic Era. Singers in the Opera Workshop perform opera and musical comedy both in scene and in fully staged productions jointly produced with the University Theatre Department.

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  The Wild Colonial Boy

  Jerry L. Bowder PhD

  The Wild Colonial Boy Presents several tunes from the 16th through the 18th centuries that were associated with life at sea and on land in Maine in the 1700's and 1800's. Commissioned by the Town of Bath for Bicentennial Celebration in 1976, the work was ordered to be five minutes in length, and to be based on tunes that were selected by Larry Douglas in an arrangement suitable for performance by Bath's public school music groups. The songs and one hymn were arranged in such a way as to suggest a story of the life a boy raised in Casco, Maine (i.e. the wild colonial boy) who goes to sea (Haul on the Bolin - a short-haul ditty sung by sailors as early as the time of King Henry VIII), falls in love and leaves his life at sea (Up She Goes), settles down on land (Plenitude -a hymn written by Supple Belcher of Farmington, Maine [from his hymn book Harmony of Maine of 1794], and Simple Gifts - a song composed by Joseph Brackett, Jr. in 1848 at the Shaker colony in Alfred, Maine), and finally takes up arms to defend his country in its fights for independecne from the British (Portsmouth).

  Of interest: Supply Belcher served under George Wshington in the Revolutionary War and was an associate of Wm. Billings, another pioneer American Composer. Joseph Brackett, Jr. lived for a short time in Gorham, Maine. His father, Joseph Brackett, Sr. donated his farm and its land to form the basis of the Shaker Colony at Sabbath Day Lake.