-Art Making-Questioning-Reflection-Contextual Information- A Week at Lincoln Center ... to perceive, a beholder must create his own experience. And his creation must include relations comparable to those which the original producer underwent. They are not the same in any literal sense. But with the perceiver, as with the artist, there must be an ordering of the elements of the whole that is in form, although not in details, the same as the process of organization the creator of the work consciously experiences. Without an act of recreation, the object is not perceived as a work of art. The artist selected, simplified, clarified, abridged and condensed according to his interest. The beholder must go through these operations according to his point of view and interest. -John Dewey, Art as Experience This past July I was accepted into a one-week training at the Lincoln Center for Education in New York. The majority of the what I would be learning had to do with a peda
Young Composers and Improvisers Workshop www.yciw.net Teaching composition is no easy task as the majority of pedagogical resources available lack the understanding of the typical classroom anatomy. Many teachers feel uncomfortable teaching this subject as we were not taught such concepts in our college pedagogy courses and may have never really delved into composition in our own role of music maker. This really puts us out of our comfort zone, and yet the benefits of a successful composition curriculum can become a catalyst for increased meaningful music making for our students . A music teacher in New York by the name of Matt McLean set out to debunk the common misconceptions we sometimes envision in classroom music composition. Matt created the non-profit organization and curriculum called the Young Composers and Improvisers Workshop (YCIW). He notes that “as a music educator I've seen my students develop their strongest connection to music when they are given