Teach­ing Tech­niques and Insight for Instru­mental Music Educators/G-3723
GIA Pub­lic­a­tions (Dis­trib­uted in Aus­tralia by Hal Leonard)

Here is a book filled with the insights and inspir­a­tional ideas of some of the world’s finest teach­ers and con­duct­ors. This book is worthy of con­sid­er­a­tion because it is a com­pil­a­tion of con­cepts and delib­er­a­tion that span the broad land­scape of ensemble-based edu­ca­tion. Casey has gathered thoughts that con­vince and at times con­flict but that is valu­able because it provides choices in find­ing answers to often vex­ing ques­tions and ques­tions that are often not eas­ily under­stood when they first con­front us.

Remem­ber, it might be argued that the truth is con­tex­tual and in this situ­ation the con­tex­tual pos­i­tion of the con­trib­ut­ors provides a vari­ety of answers for many simple and vex­ing ques­tions. For example, when dis­cuss­ing pre­par­ing for rehearsal Pro­fessor James Croft (recently retired from Flor­ida State Uni­ver­sity) stated that:

‘There are sev­eral state­ments that might guide the teacher’s plan for a rehearsal …’

He then goes on to list 15 mat­ters that may assist in plan­ning a rehearsal and means whereby defin­i­tion can be given to such plan­ning. On the next page but under the same sub­ject title the great Fre­drick Fen­nell is quoted:

‘Don’t go into a rehearsal with a pre­arranged idea of what is going to happen …’

Such appar­ent con­tra­dic­tions are in fact a stim­u­lat­ing part of this books engage­ment. They are like a vibrant dis­cus­sion around the cof­fee table or the music office desk.

Casey has col­lec­ted and col­lated these ideas with con­sid­er­a­tion and care and young band and orches­tra teach­ers will find this resource most valuable.

Ralph Hult­gren
Head of Pre-Tertiary Stud­ies
Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium of Music, Grif­fith University

Meredith Music Pub­lic­a­tions (Dis­trib­uted in Aus­tralia by Hal Leonard)

This offer­ing is writ­ten in that ‘lar­ger than life’ Amer­ican style and ver­nacu­lar but that should not hold you back from obtain­ing a copy!

I was drawn to this by the concept presen­ted in the title but when I star­ted to read it I was a little taken aback buy its ‘nice’ style. Pas­sion for your sub­ject can some­times get in the way of teach­ing it well and at times I found myself re-reading sec­tions because I just couldn’t grasp what Boon­shaft was on about!

But, the book has so much to give that it was not a bur­den to re-visit and re-consider and often I found myself reflect­ing on my prac­tice after invest­ig­at­ing for a second time what Boon­shaft had presen­ted to me. His writ­ing is con­ver­sa­tional in type and there­fore quite approach­able and though in an every­day man­ner it none the less cov­ers vitally import­ant mat­ters for the music teacher who conducts.

Boon­shaft has gathered his years of teach­ing exper­i­ence and mel­ded them with the wis­dom and exper­i­ence of col­leagues and ment­ors to pro­duce a book that reflects on prac­tice and doesn’t just tell you how to ‘do it’. Many of his examples are real and much of what is writ­ten has been honed by years of real exper­i­ence in the rehearsal room.

In one part Boon­shaft dis­cusses what it means to be power­ful. He quotes a poem given to him by one of his third cla­ri­net play­ers. It encap­su­lates much of the intent and style of the book. It reads:

I catch your eye and hold it, hold it for an etern­ity.
Your eyes scream with excite­ment, anger, pride, sat­is­fac­tion, exhil­ar­a­tion.
Your eyes speak of love, con­cern, under­stand­ing.
Your eyes cry with a strong desire, a des­per­ate yearn­ing, to help us reach our full poten­tials, our goals
You care — I can see it in your eyes.

Ralph Hult­gren
Head of Pre-Tertiary Stud­ies
Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium of Music, Grif­fith University

This latest book in the series of ‘Teach­ing Music Through Per­form­ance In’ meets the expect­a­tion of the reader who is aware of the other volumes in the series. It presents an invest­ig­a­tion of works at the upper level of con­cert band per­form­ance and endeav­ours to present the pieces with a mix of the schol­arly and gen­er­ally inform­at­ive inform­ing the dis­curs­ive nature of the writing.

Con­trib­ut­ing authors in this text include Larry Blocher, Eugene Cor­poron, Ray Cramer, Tim Lautzen­he­iser and Edward Lisk. Such con­tri­bu­tions sur­vey a vast land­scape of schol­ar­ship and exper­i­ence and in doing so add a valu­able depth of integ­rity to the writ­ing. Cramer’s com­ment­ary was par­tic­u­larly enjoy­able pos­sibly because of a per­sonal asso­ci­ation but more so because he con­nects so won­der­fully the ‘every­day’ with the real­ity of the band dir­ect­ors ‘everyday’.

Titles of chapters will draw many:
Why Music? Why Band? — Lautzen­he­iser
The Mys­ter­i­ous World of In-tune Play­ing — Lisk
Live your dreams, not your night­mares: An Opus for Life — Cramer
Liv­ing Express­ively among the Sym­bols — Cor­poron
Some Reas­sembly Required — Blocher
Improv­ing Per­form­ance through Sound Seat­ing — Miles (the editor)

What fol­lows is stand­ard prac­tice in this series — a com­pil­a­tion of titles with invest­ig­at­ive ana­lysis and ref­er­ence mater­i­als which includes sug­ges­ted fur­ther read­ing and listen­ing. The con­trib­ut­ors here are numer­ous and of a cal­ibre that rein­forces the qual­ity of those present­ing the chapters noted above and makes for a vivid vari­ety in descrip­tion, invest­ig­a­tion and focus.

This is a book that band con­duct­ors should have on their shelves and one that should be in the lib­rary of every uni­ver­sity that pre­pares con­duct­ors for schools. The other offer­ings in the series should be con­sidered also, espe­cially the orches­tra and begin­ning band volumes.

Ralph Hult­gren
Head of Pre-Tertiary Stud­ies
Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium of Music, Grif­fith University

GIA Pub­lic­a­tions (Dis­trib­uted in Aus­tralia by Hal Leonard)

Hiam Ginott is cited in the text as saying:

I have come to a fright­en­ing con­clu­sion. I am the decis­ive ele­ment in the classroom. It is my per­sonal approach that cre­ates the cli­mate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher I pos­sess tre­mend­ous power to make a child’s life miser­able or joy­ous. I can be a tool of tor­ture or an instru­ment of inspir­a­tion. I can humi­li­ate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situ­ations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escal­ated or de-escalated, and a child human­ized or de-humanized. (p.161)

My real sense is that this quote sums up the intent of this book. Cooper is intent on not only focus­ing on dis­play­ing to the teacher (old, new and pre-service) how to do ‘this’ and ‘that’ but he invest­ig­ates why. He does not rest with the old style of telling one what must be done — though he does that effi­ciently and effect­ively — but he is in pur­suit of under­pin­ning why those things must be addressed (like the quote above under the head­ing of Motiv­a­tion and Discipline).

There is ped­antry here — the basics of the music lib­rary and the rehearsal space and so forth — but there is also genu­ine con­sid­er­a­tion of stu­dents real life situ­ations and the aware­ness we need to have as we work with them. As an example of this method, Cooper, in dis­cuss­ing motiv­a­tion and dis­cip­line quotes Ross­man, who says, ‘The best dis­cip­line device is to be well pre­pared for every rehearsal and class present­a­tion’ (p.160) (an apt descrip­tion for the ped­ant). He then goes on to cite Holz and Jac­obi when they remind us that ‘Young stu­dents rarely make errors on pur­pose. Their errors are usu­ally hon­est mis­takes, caused by lack of exper­i­ence, the awk­ward­ness of unfa­mil­iar instru­ments and pos­i­tions, the inher­ent mys­ter­ies of nota­tion, or (tra­gic­ally often) the fail­ure of the instructor to make his mean­ing clear’ (p.161). It is obvi­ous his endeav­our is to can­vas a broad con­sid­er­a­tion of his mater­i­als and meth­ods, not just a nar­rowly posi­tioned one.

This then, is at once a ‘how to do’ book, com­pli­men­ted by reas­ons behind the ‘how’ and ‘what’. It is artic­u­late and approach­able and should be in the lib­rar­ies of those who teach and those who train to teach — espe­cially universities!

Ralph Hult­gren
Head of Pre-Tertiary Stud­ies
Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium of Music, Grif­fith University

A guide for ener­giz­ing and enrich­ing band, orches­tra and choral programs

Given the nature of today’s aca­demic world, a book about how to ener­gize and enrich may not meet the bench marks of edu­ca­tion that are often put in front of us. Path­ways is not a book that will tell you how to set the cor­rect embouchure for the flute or fin­ger G# in more than one way on the horn, or pro­duce those gor­geous vowel sounds from your sop­ranos. It is more import­ant than that!

Path­ways is a book about the human side of teach­ing. It dis­cusses real prob­lems you might have with real stu­dents and doesn’t engage in lengthy philo­soph­ical dis­course that would be more appro­pri­ate after a logic or edu­ca­tion psy­cho­logy class. This is a book for real life situ­ations and, though at times it can get a little too warm and fuzzy, it presents insights into the ways and means of deal­ing with the prob­lems that teacher train­ing (and music teacher train­ing par­tic­u­larly) has never really dealt with.

This is a most sat­is­fy­ing book for the teacher who is not look­ing for a tech­nical how-to text. It is some­thing that can be revis­ited time and again. The book is laid out like a set of notes that you might keep your­self. Head­ings lead you through with quotes of interest here and there. I have enjoyed and, in fact, I have been ener­gized and enriched read­ing and hav­ing some quotes leap out at me and flag some­thing for me that has evaded me or, find­ing that little insight that I have needed at the moment. For example, under the head­ing ‘Focus’ on your stu­dents’ strengths, not their weak­nesses Alsobrook drops in a thought from Stephen Schwartz: How high does the syca­more grow? If you cut it down you will never know! Maybe I should type that in as my screen saver message!

This is a sat­is­fy­ing book that would sit well in every music teacher’s library.

Ralph Hult­gren
Head of Pre-Tertiary Stud­ies
Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium of Music, Grif­fith University

GIA Pub­lic­a­tions — in 2 volumes (Dis­trib­uted in Aus­tralia by Hal Leonard)

These are books that every band and orches­tra con­ductor, and young com­poser should have in their library!

I read the first volume in two days! I star­ted and I was hooked.

Why?

Because, these books present real com­posers talk­ing of works that are present in the rep­er­toire now. They present works that speak to the musi­cian and the audi­ence now and there­fore give rel­ev­ance to both the prac­tice of the art of music we engage in and to the prac­tice of the art of teach­ing we immerse ourselves in. They con­sider music that most bands can or have played.

You can find spark­ling gems of insight and wis­dom from the composer’s own lips. You can find illu­min­a­tion of inter­pret­a­tion and depth of mean­ing in works you have heard or played before. Most import­antly you will find insight into works that have not even been writ­ten yet because the under­stand­ing you gain from the com­posers is such that it reaches bey­ond the works they dis­cuss into the very essence of their self. Wag­ner said that “music allows us to gaze into our inner­most being” and this book allows you to gaze into the inner most being of some of today’s finest composers.

Obvi­ously US-centric (volume 1 par­tic­u­larly) but these books are mas­ter works none the less!

Ralph Hult­gren
Head of Pre-Tertiary Stud­ies
Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium of Music, Grif­fith University

Meredith Music Pub­lic­a­tions (Dis­trib­uted in Aus­tralia by Hal Leonard)

I thought this book was well known but it seems not! Though many teach­ers may have flicked through it on a store dis­play I am sure that a large num­ber of them have thought it a little too tech­nical and a little too much like les­son plans and cur­riculum — the things you went into instru­mental music to avoid!

Well, it is!

It is one of the best instruc­tional manu­als you will find in devel­op­ing a sequenced, logical and con­sidered approach to plan­ning your ensemble’s growth music­ally and edu­ca­tion­ally. Though the book is con­sidered ‘old’ in that it was first pub­lished in 1976, it remains a sig­ni­fic­ant sign post for those genu­inely inter­ested in devel­op­ing their rehears­als and pro­grams as sub­stan­tial learn­ing envir­on­ments for the students.

Garo­falo looks at all that is import­ant in plan­ning teach­ing in the rehearsal room and he takes you bey­ond the pos­i­tion of just con­sid­er­ing the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the student’s play­ing. He asks you ‘why’!

He reminds us that:

An edu­cator, from the Latin edu­catus, is one who devel­ops and cul­tiv­ates another’s men­tal, moral and aes­thetic faculties.

He sug­gests that to teach by just shov­el­ling in the inform­a­tion is not what it really means to teach. He goes on to say:

In the best sense of the word, to edu­cate means to educe, from the Latin edu­cere — to bring out, and it implies draw­ing out of a per­son some­thing poten­tial or latent.

This is some­thing we must remind ourselves of time and again!

Blue­print for Band is a valu­able resource for teach­ers at all stages of their careers. It will bring ques­tions to your mind and answers too.

Ralph Hult­gren
Head of Pre-Tertiary Stud­ies
Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium of Music, Grif­fith University