Using Scandinavian immigrant culture as a backdrop, this project presents an integrated multiple intelligences approach to teaching Kindergarten and elementary school students about their music, history, and cultural inheritance. The paper describes eight themes that formed the framework of the eight-week music curriculum used in the project. Examples of the childrens artwork and creative writing are included in the work. The author concludes that raising childrens awareness of a single specific culture through their music, dance, art, and food preferences stimulates the childrens curiosity about their own heritage resulting in increased communication with their family members and greater self-knowledge. The project also created a more positive and productive teaching/learning relationship between the instructor and the various class members and gave the students an opportunity to share their discoveries with the rest of the schools population.

No Abstract

Jam, Burke, M.F.A Spring 2013 The Shadow of Polaris: Understanding Sound and Place Chairperson: Associate Professor Brad Allen The Shadow of Polaris examines perception, perspective, and place. My research investigates a critical theory of sound as phenomenon and art object. The phenomenon of sound informs our perception and perspective of place. It articulates questions about how we experience and interact with the physical world. My intention is to create an experiential understanding of the physical and, more specifically, the natural world. Natures ephemeral cycles are symbiotic with the human experience of life. Examining this relationship illuminates how we perceive, experience, and interact with the world. With human population close to seven billion, the natural world is at a critical point, socially and ecologically. My questions are further explored by examining the ideas of biophilia, technophilia, and sonification. The relationship between these ideas is synchronous with the idea of intimacy with place in todays world. If we listen, our pre-existing ideas of what we know about our world, and our place in it, begin to shift. Polaris, the historical visual beacon of location, becomes a new point of reference. Our ability to interweave information about perception, perspective and place into clear points of connection, allows us greater understanding of our world and the vital relationship we each have with place.

Giving the Ghost is the written masters thesis that accompanies the exhibition of the same title by the artist Will Hutchinson.

UNAPOLOGETIC is the culmination of my research concerning issues of gender, sexuality and identity and how these issues concern public vs. private lives.

i. A Synthetic Spring will be to serve the public as an encounter rather than an art object. ii. The actual event will be free and open to the public, and will only last two hours. iii. The aim is to create something precious and rare. This exclusiveness is a reaction to the twenty-first centurys fascination with identity through the online appearance, the viral video, the text message, the twitter posting, the sound byte, the Internet meme, binge online shopping, etc. iv. In the greater scope, the event will technically begin with the use of promotion several months before the actual event. The promotion will take all shapes and forms, both digitally and physically. We will lure spectators visually, sonically, socially, and psychologically, by creating hype, mystery, anticipation, and curiosity. v. A Synthetic Spring will be a mixture of everything we have seen before, and nothing we have seen before. vi. A Synthetic Spring will be a constructed situation and outcomes will vary. vii. A Synthetic Spring will be experimental and challenging by necessity. viii. A Synthetic Spring offers a dichotomous contribution; through the celebration of the artificial, the genuine will surface. A significant amount of the participants will not fully acknowledge this experience. ix. The art of composing comedy is the same sort of thing as the art of composing tragedy. x. A Synthetic Spring takes shape when we are all becoming its actors.

Sattvikabhinaya and psychosomatics

The intent of my project was the creation of a Music Technology Program/Composition Lab to be used as a component of the music curriculum offered at Big Sky High School (BSHS)in Missoula, MT. A major teaching standard cited in the Missoula County Public Schools (MCPS)music curriculum is that of composition. In my ten years in the district, that component has barely been addressed. I am looking forward to offering new opportunities to my students and am excited about the prospect of student composition.

With all of the digital resources available to students and teachers alike, there are now easy and effective ways to create resources for my students which specifically address pinpointed musical needs in the choral classroom. Just because they exist, however, does not automatically mean that they will be utilized in a timely or efficient manner in the midst of an active school year. One of the most profound realizations I encountered during my journey through the Creative Pulse classes was that I have become a robot, a slave, a jukebox of sorts when it comes to helping my students succeed. Although I lead creative, effective, and engaging rehearsals during class time, my programs success is causing me to bog down in the minutia of those things which must be repeated almost the same way for hundreds of students, for hundreds of hours, year after year. I have just completed year thirteen of my teaching career, and it is time to use my wisdom and skills to create a more streamlined workflow for my program. In reviewing my school year activities, the bulk of extra time spent with my students is, by far, preparing them for auditions that happen each and every year. With this project, I am striving to hand over valuable rehearsal tools to the students themselves so that they can become empowered and I can more quickly work with them on the more advanced aspects of their music-making.

<p> Original Sculpture</p>