A post-pandemic teaching environment, a new generation of students, stress, depression, anxiety and fear, and a world of pressures and still we’re supposed to teach and make beautiful music. But in all the discussion, programs, and plans, what happened to those who stand in front of the students: US? And does music even matter? It does. Most importantly, so do YOU. Through a combination of stories, parables, and research, Dr. Milt Allen weaves a Zen-like tapestry that covers a broad range of subjects, yet all coming back to those who stand in front. Whether you need to rethink, renew, recover, or rediscover, there’s sure to be something for you in this incredible journey into what really matters.

Successful music educators from rural, one-light towns and bustling cities provide innovative methods for recruiting and retaining students. From elementary ukulele ensembles to high school bands, orchestras, and vocal ensembles, the strategies within these pages will greatly assist in building a successful music program from the bottom up. The ideas in this highly engaging text will have your program bursting at the seams with eager and dedicated student-musicians.

Music teaching is one of the most rewarding professions on Earth. But music educators, who frequently interact with parents, colleagues, administrators, and the public—plus students—can also face a wide range of moral and ethical choices.

In this resource, the authors address head-on some of the most challenging scenarios and stressful situations music educators often encounter.

This resource offers clear and practical tools for music professionals, students, educators, movement specialists, and therapists working with musicians. You’ll learn about relevant anatomy—in particular, joints, muscles, and fascia—and get information on how the brain and movement are linked together. You’ll find dozens of illustrated performance-targeted exercises for all parts of the body, with specific instructions for different types of instruments as well as for singers.

In thirteen easily digestible chapters, author and composer David von Kampen highlights the most useful and practical music theory topics that educators, conductors, composers, and performers actually encounter in their everyday musical careers.

Some of the topics in the book are addressed at length in traditional theory classes, while others are often not included in theory classes (but should be).

Music teacher educators from across the country share their inspiring stories and unique approaches to embedding Social Emotional Learning (SEL) into teacher education programs, courses, field experiences, curriculum, and policy at the collegiate level.

The contributors—representing a broad range of music disciplines, teaching contexts, and diverse student populations—discuss their challenges and triumphs with SEL instruction, offering many innovative ideas, learning experiences, and suggestions for teaching musical and intentional SEL.

"Jason Max Ferdinand's book Teaching With Heart is the first book to directly help us address the societal issues in our choral rehearsals. Not attempting to separate the music from social issues, this new tool in the classroom uses musical examples to address uncomfortable topics and hopefully 'open minds and hearts.' Built to ask singers to read, watch, listen and then to respond and discuss, this resource has been developed with the help of nine outstanding contributors and ten composers and arrangers."

An in-depth guide to lesson and rehearsal planning that provides a concise method for aligning music instruction with state and national music standards while continuing to focus on active music making. Written for teachers in early childhood, P–12, higher education, and adult learning settings, this second edition includes new and updated chapters by a team of contributors with deep, practical experience in the music classroom at all educational levels.

The Rhythm of Somalia is a delightful collection of songs, games, and stories of the Somali people, as shared by more than a dozen elementary students and families living in the metro region of Minnesota where authors Qorsho Hassan and Becca Buck teach.

Like the other books in the World Music Initiative series, this collection provides important historical and cultural context for each song or game, along with photographs and illustrations, offering a glimpse into the depth and beauty of Somali culture and its traditions.

Prepare to be amazed by one old lady’s bizarre and enormous appetite in this delightfully silly folk song, part of a series of captivating picture books based on beloved songtales from the great American folk tradition.

Each verse of this classic cumulative tale gets longer and longer as the old lady progressively consumes larger and more improbable animals, a comedic premise that has delighted audiences for centuries.

Created to inspire playful movement, listening, singing, and/or chanting—during car rides, at home, or in early childhood or elementary general music classes. Created to inspire playful movement, listening, singing, and/or chanting—during car rides, at home, or in early childhood or elementary general music classes

Easy-to-read folk song arrangements for two- and three-part treble voices with piano accompaniment—perfect as concert pieces for elementary and middle school choirs or for sight-reading practice in the general music classroom.

After more than fifty years as a music educator and conductor, the legendary Paula Crider has experienced it all—the lows and the highs, the messes and the magnificence of teaching music at all levels. With love, wit, and sincerity, she now shares her hard-earned wisdom in this must-read for anyone who teaches music.

There is something here for educators on every leg of the teaching journey. Crider’s conversational narrative begins with her unconventional student-teaching experience and moves through the essentials for music educators—everything from score study, rehearsal strategies, and conducting technique to classroom culture and teacher self-care.

Inspired by real-life letters from students, parents, and administrators, author Mary Land shares the stories, strategies, and ideas that have helped her form essential connections throughout her forty years in the classroom.

This resource offers insight and inspiration direct from the trenches, resulting in a volume filled with inventiveness and guidance for all music teachers.

What could a musical style LOOK like to a visual learner? Can visual images improve conceptual understanding of INTONATION, BALANCE, and BLEND? This text provides tools and techniques for visualizing complex musical ideas using simple shapes and illustrations and provides immediate resources to explain complex musical concepts in practical terms. Imagery is a powerful tool that transitions musicians from PREPARATION to PERFORMANCE—analytical to the artistic—seamlessly moving from notes and rhythms to shaping phrases and sensing music’s aesthetic beauty.

GO ON, Tell Your Story! is a powerful collection of real-life stories told by trailblazing women band directors of varied experiences and identities about the world of professional music and conducting.

Poignant, funny, sad, and uplifting, these stories offer a unique perspective into the challenging and rewarding world of music education and performance, inviting readers to listen and grow with each vignette.

Written as a guide for discussion and reflection amongst music educators, Women in Wind Band thoughtfully looks at why female-identifying band directors are still a minority in the field and what can be done about it.

Centered on the experiences and wisdom of women in the field, the book is divided into three parts. Part I features essays by five professionals who explore best practice and contemporary issues.

Central to this resource are more than 200 listening examples, recorded with and without errors, which progress in difficulty from simple one-voice melodies to more complex two- and four-voice arrangements. Importantly, each unit introduces only a single musical element, such as rhythm, before combining multiple elements in the cumulative units. The book culminates in error detection practice with full wind ensemble recordings excerpted from the standard literature.

The best way to develop a young jazz musician’s understanding of how jazz is supposed to sound is through great listening examples.

In this resource for experienced and novice jazz educators, author Jim Childers organizes hundreds of great jazz recordings into tables—and provides companion Spotify and YouTube playlists—to showcase specific jazz concepts, styles, characteristic tone, genres, emotion, and more.

Clarinetists devote hours to honing their craft—from learning correct fingerings, embouchure, and tonguing, to the history of the instrument, music theory, and musicianship.

Body Mapping for Clarinetists, written by two Body Mapping and Alexander Technique specialists, approaches clarinet playing from a full body perspective and shows how healthy, coordinated movement leads to more expressive music making while preventing injury.

Habits of a Successful Beginner Mariachi Músico is a field-tested, vital, and – most important – musical collection of over 100 sequenced exercises to build fundamentals in a beginner mariachi program. Perfect for use by an entire ensemble or solo player, this series contains carefully sequenced exercises for violin, trumpet, guitar/vihuela, and guitarrón that also include rhythm vocabulary charts, musical terms, and activities to teach idiomatic genres and styles.

Now available for Electric Bass!

Habits of a Successful Beginner Band Musician is a field-tested, vital, and—most important—musical collection of 225 sequenced exercises for the beginning band student. The book’s cutting-edge online component, Habits Universal, features a backend gradebook that allows students to submit video recordings of their performances as a primary source of assessment.

The Inner Violin is a guide to the mastery of violin technique and offers a path to the authenticity that all artists strive for. Hoppenot was the first to observe what she called le mal du violon (the violin disease). Very early on she understood that this problematic rapport with the instrument was a common condition of musicians who associate the violin with physical pain, anxiety, and frustration. This book demonstrates with acute clarity the connection between body and mind when playing the violin and interpreting music.

This book contains collective insights from some of the most inspirational full orchestra conductors and teachers in the United States. They reveal their ideas on rehearsal preparation and score study, warm-up strategies, favorite repertoire, intonation, balance, blend, expression, recruiting, and building a culture of success in the ensemble. You will surely be inspired by this diverse set of musician-educators as they share their ideas, approaches, and strategies in Rehearsing the Full Orchestra.

Another indispensable guide for aspiring and established clarinetists preparing for orchestral auditions, The Audition Method for Clarinet, Volume 2 offers even more core audition repertoire along with insight and advice from authors Mark Nuccio and Benjamin Baron.

Imagine a conversation among leaders who are passionate about their choral music teaching, who have found incredible power in Music Learning Theory (MLT), who exchange ideas about how to be successful in the classroom, and who are eager to share what they’ve learned with one another. This is the magic of Q & A for MLT: Choral Music Perspectives on Music Learning Theory.

Choral Charisma presents an accessible yet comprehensive approach to singing with expression. Written for directors, singers, and teachers at all levels, the book presents techniques and insights empowering the reader to bring even more humanity to their craft. The heart, mind, body, and spirit can play together to make singing even more fulfilling—for you and your audience.

This book shares the exercises that have been at the core of vocal pedagogy for the choirs at Westminster Choir College: Chapel Choir/Schola Cantorum, Westminster Williamson Voices, Symphonic Choir, Westminster Choir, and his professional ensemble, The Same Stream

Essentials of the Choral Warm-Up aligns choral pedagogy with the principles of voice science, which will transform the sound, intonation, and musicianship of choral ensembles at all levels.

Experience the music, magic, and delight of this holiday season with An Evening of Readings and Carols–a double album featuring the live recording of Westminster Choir College of Rider University’s 30th Anniversary performance.

Commissioned by the Bach Collegium San Diego, this edition features Handel’s original score paired with a Spanish-language libretto by Mario Montenegro. Montenegro has carefully crafted an original text that preserves and reveals the spiritual meaning of the original work and is beautifully suited to Handel’s score while honoring the structure and musicality of the Spanish language.

A vast and practical application of the Music Learning Theory of Edwin Gordon for the choral rehearsal. Using an accessible work by Dan Davison, the authors guide teacher/conductors through a re-imagined rehearsal process with important supporting pedagogies that help teachers reach new levels of musicianship with ensembles at all levels.

This edition includes both Shaw’s English translation as well as the original German text. Also included are Shaw’s own performance and diction markings informed by the countless hours he spent studying and performing the work.

As a musical trailblazer, virtuoso marimbist Keiko Abe can be compared with other musical luminaries like cellist Pablo Casals, Spanish classical guitarist Narciso Epes, and pianist Glenn Gould. Thanks to her years of international performances, compositions, and teaching, her musical works have become standard literature worldwide.

In this edition, from over 300 compositions, 69 published works including solos, concerti, marimba duos, marimba ensembles, as well as works for marimba with percussion ensembles, orchestras, and wind ensembles are discussed in detail with insightful interpretive concepts and helpful technical suggestions by the composer.