Teachers as Audiences: Exploring Educational and Musical Values in Youth Performances

Abstract

While music performances typically cater to insider audiences (S.E. Pitts, 2005, Valuing Musical Participation. Burlington, VT: Ashgate), Youth Performances aim to initiate young people who have not yet formed these connections. Teachers are the main gatekeepers of the event, functioning as sub-hosts, instigating the visit, and framing the experience by allotting class time (or not) for preparation and follow-up. Yet they are typically outsiders to musical performances. Their roles in Youth Music Performances are characterized by a double contrast: (i) compared with the insider audiences of regular performances, and (ii) compared with their own leadership role in their classroom. Observations of youth performances, and interviews with teachers attending these performances, reveal a close fit between school and performance values, both of which emphasize disciplined behaviour, and tolerance for diverse cultures. However, while music youth performances provide rich and generative curricula for children, presenting expressions that are not available in schools, teachers seem to be a fragile link. This indicates the significance of reaching out to teachers, nurturing their roles of framing these experiences and becoming part of the insider audience.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Gabriel Rusinek, Jolyn Blank, Koji Matsunobu, and Gila Budescu, who participated in the study in data collection in its first year; to Michael Breaux, Wei-Ren Chen, and Walenia Silva, who participated in its second year; and to Donna Murray-Tiedge and Julia Panke Makela who have participated in its second and third year. I am grateful to Eve Harwood, Chris Higgins, Jeanne Klein, Lia Laor, and Jean Osborne for reading early drafts of this paper and their insightful comments.

Notes

¹PACs, as I elaborate later in this paper, present music, drama, and dance performances, and typically feature diverse artistic styles, as well as hybrid forms, within and across media.

²The word curriculum stems from the Latin word for racecourse, referring to the course of activities and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults.

³This trend is clearly manifested in one of the first and largest leading performing arts centres, Lincoln Center, which hosts 12 artistic groups, including theatre, ballet, opera, and film, and within music, chamber music society, the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

⁴This is a pseudonym.

⁵Other types of YP include family concerts and lunchtime concerts, which had a large share of parents with young children.

⁶Data collection included several cycles of researchers. Gabriel Rusinek, Jolyn Blank, and Koji Matsunobu participated in the first year of the study; Michael Breaux, Wei-Ren Chen, and Walenia Silva participated in the second year; Julia Panke Makela and Donna Murray-Tiedge participated in the second and third years.

⁷I envision a second stage of this study with a focus on children's experiences, but at this stage, the thrust was on understanding adults' perspectives and how performing fits with their understanding of education.

⁸Done by Julia Panke Makela.

⁹This performance was attended by Gabriel Rusinek and myself. This vignette is based on both sets of field-notes.

¹⁰Exceptions were when the artist visited the school and the music teacher was involved.

¹¹I am indebted to Chris Higgins who pointed out this analogy.

¹²Higgins, 2010, private communication.

¹³Indeed, the most elusive subject for elementary teachers to teach is music. When asked to choose a specialist in elementary level in one discipline, teachers overwhelmingly opted for music specialists, as compared, for example, with the visual arts where classroom teachers felt comfortable teaching it (Bresler, 1991).

¹⁴Music retains a key and central role in the lives of most people who see themselves, as these classroom teachers did, as ‘not musical’. It is emotional self-management that is at the heart of this role (Sloboda, 2001, p. 243).

¹⁵Prairie's extension of repertoires and genres to include folk, jazz, and popular music, was meant to bridge that gap, presenting performances to wider audiences.