The Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass offers something very unique to their students — the Experiential Education Program requires all conservatory students to create a music project and carry it out through live performance. It is like what we called in engineering school, a “laboratory.” It is not enough to think about the project or to write about the project, you actually have to get out there and do it.

“Experiential Education is a vital component of Longy’s Conservatory curriculum, designed to prepare student-musicians for an increasingly diverse and complex world, to prepare them – in the words of our mission statement – ‘to make a difference in the world.’

Required of all students, this two-semester course includes interactive presentations, discussions, and readings. Students strengthen their communication skills and understanding of audience education, public advocacy for music and the arts, and entrepreneurship. They are challenged to think more broadly about music, its role in society, their career options, and the best use of their skills.”

– from Longy.edu

Many students choose to tie in a service aspect to their projects. This is a great way to generate an audience and seems like a very natural transition to post-graduate life, where many musicians go on to serve the community professionally and semi-professionally. I have found singing for children to be personally rewarding, artistically enriching and lucrative. By way of example, I had the good fortune to perform with Opera for the Young, the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Opera in the Neighborhoods program, and through the Chicago Symphony’s Kraft Family Series.

Serving children, the elderly, poor or imprisoned is an experience I certainly wish I had been challenged to pursue during school as they do at Longy. How vivid of a memory and how empowering would it be for the students to create, promote and perform a concert at a jail in Boston? Look out Johnny Cash! That is not to mention the actual, tangible impact that these concerts will make in enriching the Cambridge and greater-Boston communities.

I am trilled to be working with singers and non-singers at Longy this March through the EEP courses! I definitely think I can contribute and am excited for the opportunity to expand my game.

I will tailor the material to address the needs of the project team (rather than the individual singer) while each team is in the midst of executing their projects. Teams will have made some strides in planning and researching, but potentially not quite solidified anything tangible and deliverable.

We will focus the session on project management: techniques, tools and skills. We will extract lessons learned from the first half of their EEP project, give them some time for a “reality check” and help them plan what they would like to do differently going forward. It would be a shot in the arm, to help get the teams re-energized and focused.

I will customize my new e-workbook to cover some of these principles:

• Entrepreneurship strengths / weaknesses checklist
• Visualization / discussion of the ideal project workflow
• Reality check and personal tendencies
• Project risks assessment
• Project priorities
• Project goals
• Project action items
• Project accountability

I am thrilled to help support these many worthwhile and service-oriented projects. See you in Boston!