As you’re planning repertoire for your next concert, how about including a composition that features a narrator, and invite your school principal, headmaster, superintendent or school board president to perform with the ensemble? And if you can’t find a suitable piece that features a narration, have them read a poem before a work that sets the tone of the piece. Allowing them to share in the energy and emotions of a performance, and experience the intensity and multifaceted-communications of rehearsals, can provide them with a depth of understanding of what we do every day in a way that words simply can’t describe, and them observing just can’t capture.

Peter Loel Boonshaft, Director of Education
KHS America

About the Author

Dr. Boonshaft is the author of the critically acclaimed best-selling books Teaching Music with Passion, Teaching Music with Purpose, and Teaching Music with Promise. Dr. Boonshaft is currently on the faculty of Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, where he is Professor of Music and Director of Bands. He has also been named Director of Education for KHS America. He was honored by the National Association for Music Education and Music For All as the first recipient of the “George M. Parks Award for Leadership in Music Education.”

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