Passing the Baton

Freshly sharpened pencils. New spiral notebooks. Markings of a new school year and a new opportunity to fill your brain with math and English and music. Many composers led double lives as teachers, and some of the music we remember best originated in the classroom.

When a student becomes an award-winner, you congratulate the teacher, right? A teacher like Dr. Chris Dickey, assistant professor of tuba at WSU. His student earned this year’s first prize in European Music at the Charleston International Music Competition. The student is WSU sophomore Tim Schrader.

Conducting a symphony orchestra is hard. It takes a special set of skills to bring out just the right sound from a stage full of players. Even after Bellingham Symphony’s Music Director Yaniv Attar finished his studies with legendary classical guitarist Sharon Isbin, he found that she still had a thing or two to teach him about conducting.

“I promise you, children become what they are told they are.” The words of the first teacher to be awarded the National Medal of the Arts, Dorothy DeLay. Her violin students numbered in the hundreds, and they include some of music’s biggest names: Midori, Nigel Kennedy, Sarah Chang, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Anne Akiko Meyers, Gil Shaham and Itzhak Perlman.

From the teaching studio to the concert hall, musicians are uniquely poised to create community through their work. For one Tacoma-based violin teacher, inspiration comes from camaraderie with fellow performers and students.

The last time orchestras had a regular concert season, few works by female composers were played. In fact, less then 9% of music programmed by the top orchestras in the U.S. were by women composers. Where are all the women? Dr. Sophia Tegart, professor of flute and music history at Washington State University is making sure they take a prominent place in her classroom.

Austin Schlichting is a high school orchestra and choir director, in addition to teaching fifth grade strings in Lacey, Washington. He is part of a music education legacy. On top of being a performer and composer, Schlichting continues a four generations-long tradition of northwest music teachers in his family.

Arcangelo Corelli, respectfully known as “The Archangel,” and George Frideric Handel, nicknamed “the dear Saxon” by his adoring Italian public. Two household names among Baroque Era composers. Two famous musicians with a mentor-protégé relationship.

The early 20th century presented a series of uphill battles for women in music. For woman of color, they scaled mountains to compose, play and share their voices. It was a series of old locked doors, blatant racism and intolerance. While many in the white, male-dominated music community turned backs, refusing to listen, or even attempted to stop them before they could start , Florence Price and her student Margaret Bonds supported *each other* in tearing down doors and making history.

Music is a tough business, but a diverse one. Not everyone can take center stage in the concert hall. At Washington State University, Dr. Keri McCarthy is one of the professors encouraging her students to think about their future roles in society as musicians– as music consumers, creators, and educators -- by looking to the past.