Lecture Presentation & Discussion
Zach Ebin, director
February 12, 2025 @ 8:00pm
Turner Hall, Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
One of the most significant ways in which university music programs interact with the community around them is through precollegiate music education. While performances and lectures can bring in audiences from the community several times per year, precollegiate education can bring in members of the community on a weekly or even more frequent basis. Due to a universities size and resources, compared to community music schools and private music teaching studios, universities are uniquely positioned to draw in a greater and more diverse student body. If precollegiate programing is integrated into the university, precollegiate music education can generate new audiences for university music programs and serve as an important link between the university and the “real world.” Further, almost all, if not all, of our graduating students who pursue musical careers and strive to share their music with the “real world” will engage in teaching music to children in some form. The proposed events will help prepare our students for this work.
We will invite two distinguished guest artists—music pedagogues of the highest level who have a proven history of engaging with the community through precollegiate music education—to visit the university, one in the fall of 2024 and the other in the spring of 2025:
Ching-yi Lin (Professor of violin at Western Kentucky University)
Meredith Blecha-Wells (Professor of Cello, at Oklahoma State University)