Great Music Teaching

We think of teaching as involving a plan, a set structure of lessons to complete. But for the PUBLIQuartet, teaching is all about improvisation. They teach musicians to respond and engage with the room, sometimes abandoning the plan altogether. Following your intuition puts the emphasis on process rather than product—and that’s where the real learning happens.

How do you teach students to read music? For Margaret Jenks, it’s about teaching them that they already know how to. Jenks roots her teaching in attention: noticing rhythm, noticing patterns, noticing absence, and most importantly, noticing each other. The best teachers do not work from a checklist—rather, they teach intention and intentional listening. They guide students toward a greater awareness of the world.

Everyone is an artist, and everyone can use music to express themselves. But for some, such expression is hard. It’s incredibly vulnerable to create music and reveal something so personal. But Emily Eagen emphasizes that this intimacy is to be celebrated. By weaving it into her own instruction, Emily demonstrates how intimacy is what gives music all its power.

What does it mean to be musically gifted? Sean Jones understands this gift to be as much a blessing as it is a responsibility. It is our charge to realize our talents. There’s a song that sits, awaiting in each one of us. Music teachers encourage students to find that song and assure them of its worth. In doing so, they empower students to let their song out.

Does focusing on students imply a sacrifice of your own creative expression? Not to Thomas Cabaniss. Practicing as a teaching artist, Cabaniss centers his own artistic experience. His passion for creation inspires engagement and sheds inhibition in the classroom. We are left with the opposite conviction: Creativity is contagious—cultivating it in oneself cultivates it in others.

Once a great teacher enters your life, you’re never the same. Great teachers function as excavators; they chisel away, honing in and refining a student’s talents. They extract abilities that may have laid latent, unrealized. This teaching pedagogy is embodied by music teachers like Bishop Chantel Wright. Wright is meticulous and uncompromising, traits that lend themselves well to teaching the precisions of music. As she shares her story, consider the most demanding teachers in your life, and what they have unearthed in you.

Inspiring stories and invaluable insights—for, and about, great music teachers.