As music educators, we address the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards in our classrooms — creating, performing and responding. The fourth standard of connecting often gets overlooked because of budget constraints or difficulty in measurement. Maybe the challenges from the pandemic and solutions in addressing ensemble music education virtually have shown a path to incorporating connection as part of comprehensive musicianship in the curriculum.
Certainly, students in traditional and emerging ensemble music need to conceptualize, develop and refine artistic work.
The second stage of interpreting artistic work; understanding the artist’s manipulation of the elements and the context of the work; learning to make interpretative decisions with expressive intent and refining those techniques enhance the level of performance standards. In learning to respond students must analyze the work and context, discern the artist’s expressive intent and evaluate musical works and performances on established criteria.
Read the full article here.