Carnegie Hall

(New York, NY; September 14, 2023)—Carnegie Hall today announced the release of Great Music Teaching, a six-episode music education podcast series brought to audiences in partnership with public media organization PRX — one of the world’s top podcast publishers. Great Music Teaching features enlightening conversations with extraordinary music educators from across the US as they share their compelling personal stories. Hosted by celebrated jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and internationally recognized educator Sean Jones, this inspiring series offers invaluable answers and insights into what makes a music teacher “great.”

Great Music Teaching explores the unique approaches, personal histories, and distinct experiences of masterful music teachers, including what drives them to teach, showing the power that educators have to make a difference in people’s lives.

The podcast series debuts on September 21, 2023 and will be available on Carnegie Hall’s website and free on-demand across all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify. New episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays through October 26.

Hosted by Baltimore-based Sean Jones, each episode of the podcast explores a different theme to highlight the work and approach of a specific music teacher while reflecting a fundamental aspect of teaching. A stellar group of special guests include Chicago native Bishop Chantel Wright, choral director and founder of the ensemble “Songs of Solomon,” who went on to create the Songs of Solomon Academy for the Arts that serves students in New York City; composer and teaching artist Thomas Cabaniss from Charleston, South Carolina who also teaches at The Juilliard School; Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter, composer, and teaching artist Emily Eagen; Madison, Wisconsin-based K–12 music educator Margaret Jenks; and PUBLIQuartet — the innovative chamber ensemble dedicated to playing new string works and supporting emerging composers.

“Ask anyone about their favorite music teacher, and you’re bound to hear a great story. From the lessons they teach, to the confidence, creativity, and curiosity they nurture, these educators make a lasting impact on so many people,” said Sean Jones, who holds the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz Studies at The Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute. “Great Music Teaching explores the careers, communities, and personal histories of different kinds of music teachers and provides a glimpse of the difference they’ve made in their students’ lives.”

“We are thrilled to introduce our brand-new Great Music Teaching podcast to listeners across the country,” said Sarah Johnson, Chief Education Officer and Director of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. “This new series highlights the life-changing work of some of our country's most remarkable music educators with personal stories that all of us can relate to, no matter our own vocation. Each episode includes valuable perspectives and insights that will not only inspire educators, but people from all walks of life. The series complements WMI’s extensive work collaborating with teachers in New York City and throughout the US, as they share their love of music with hundreds of thousands of students each year.”

Great Music Teaching is the first-ever podcast released by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI), the education and social impact arm of the Hall. Over the past decade, the expansion of WMI’s programs across the country has created a national community of teachers dedicated to providing the best music education to their students. These programs are underpinned by webinars, program convenings, and digital resources made available to teachers and partner organizations for free, as well as the Music Educators Workshop, in which teachers share best practices, develop new skills, learn from arts practitioners, and create a professional learning community—investing in the people across the country who will teach students for years to come. The Hall serves educators in all 50 states, as well as in 27 countries around the world.

Visit Carnegie Hall’s Great Music Teaching podcast page to access full-length episodes and learn more about topics, host, guests, inspiring stories, and more.

Great Music Teaching podcast episodes are as follows:

EPISODE 1 (September 21, 2023):
Unearth
Featuring Bishop Chantel Wright

Once a great teacher enters your life, you’re never the same. Great teachers function as excavators; they chisel away, honing in and refining a student’s talents. They extract abilities that may have laid latent, unrealized. This teaching pedagogy is embodied by music teachers like Bishop Chantel Wright. Wright is meticulous and uncompromising, traits that lend themselves well to teaching the precisions of music. As she shares her story, consider the most demanding teachers in your life, and what they have unearthed in you.

EPISODE 2 (September 28, 2023):
Cultivate
Featuring Thomas Cabaniss

You may have heard the old saying: “Those who can’t do, teach.” But are the two naturally at odds? Does focusing on students imply a sacrifice of your own creative expression? Not to Thomas Cabaniss. Practicing as a “teaching artist,” Cabaniss centers his own artistic experience. His passion for creation inspires engagement and sheds inhibition in the classroom. We are left with the opposite conviction: Creativity is contagious—cultivating it in oneself cultivates it in others.

EPISODE 3 (October 5, 2023):
Empower
Featuring Sean Jones

What does it mean to be musically gifted? Sean Jones understands this gift to be as much a blessing as it is a responsibility. It is our charge to realize our talents. There’s a song that sits, awaiting in each one of us. Music teachers encourage students to find that song and assure them of its worth. In doing so, they empower students to let their song out.

EPISODE 4 (October 12, 2023):
Express
Featuring Emily Eagen

Everyone is an artist, and everyone can use music to express themselves. But for some, such expression is hard. It’s incredibly vulnerable to create music and reveal something so personal. But Emily Eagen emphasizes that this intimacy is to be celebrated. By weaving it into her own instruction, Emily demonstrates how intimacy is what gives music all its power.

EPISODE 5 (October 19, 2023):
Notice
Featuring Margaret Jenks

How do you teach students to read music? For Margaret Jenks, it’s about teaching them that they already know how to. Jenks roots her teaching in attention: noticing rhythm, noticing patterns, noticing absence, and most importantly, noticing each other. The best teachers do not work from a checklist—rather, they teach intention and intentional listening. They guide students toward a greater awareness of the world.

EPISODE 6 (October 26, 2023):
Improvise
Featuring PUBLIQuartet

We think of teaching as involving a plan, a set structure of lessons to complete. But for the PUBLIQuartet, teaching is all about improvisation. They teach musicians to respond and engage with the room, sometimes abandoning the plan altogether. Following your intuition puts the emphasis on process rather than product—and that’s where the real learning happens.


About Sean Jones
Music and spirituality have always been fully intertwined in the artistic vision of trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and activist Sean Jones. Singing and performing as a child with the church choir in his hometown of Warren, Ohio, Jones switched from the drums to the trumpet at the age of 10.

Jones is a musical chameleon and is comfortable in any musical setting no matter what the role or the genre. He is equally adept in being a member of an ensemble as he is at being a bandleader. Jones turned a 6-month stint with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra into an offer from Wynton Marsalis for a permanent position as lead trumpeter, a post he held from 2004 until 2010. In 2015, Jones was tapped to become a member of the SFJAZZ Collective. During this time, he managed to keep a core group of talented musicians together under his leadership forming the foundation for his groups that have produced and released eight recordings on the Mack Avenue Records, the latest is his 2017 release Sean Jones: Live from the Jazz Bistro.

Sean Jones has been prominently featured with a number of artists, recording and/or performing with many major figures in jazz, including Illinois Jacquet, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Nancy Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Gerald Wilson and Marcus Miller. Jones was selected by Miller, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter for their Tribute to Miles tour in 2011.

He has also performed with the Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Youngstown Symphony Orchestras as well as Soulful Symphony in Baltimore and in a chamber group at the Salt Bay Chamber Festival. Sean is also an internationally recognized educator. In addition to serving as artistic director of NYO Jazz—one of Carnegie Hall’s three acclaimed national youth ensembles—he is the immediate past president of the Jazz Education Network. In 2018, he was named the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair of Jazz at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Before coming to Peabody, Jones served as the Chair of the Brass Department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

About Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute
Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI) creates visionary programs that embody Carnegie Hall’s commitment to music education, playing a central role in fulfilling the Hall’s mission of making great music accessible to as many people as possible. With unparalleled access to the world’s greatest artists, WMI’s programs are designed to inspire audiences of all ages, nurture tomorrow’s musical talent, and harness the power of music to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. An integral part of Carnegie Hall’s concert season, these programs facilitate creative expression, develop musical skills and capacities at all levels, and encourage participants to make lifelong personal connections to music.

More than 800,000 people each year engage in WMI’s programs through national and international partnerships, in New York City schools and community settings, and at Carnegie Hall. This includes more than 155 orchestras, music presenters, and education organizations in 40 states as well as internationally in 27 countries on 6 continents. WMI’s hands-on programs tap into the creativity of audiences of all ages, inviting them to make their own music in all genres, express their viewpoints, and raise their voices. In the 2023–2024 season, WMI celebrates the 10th anniversary of Music Educators Workshop which brings together music educators from New York City and across the US to strengthen their skills through community building, professional development, and musical activities. WMI also shares an extensive range of online music education resources and program materials for free with teachers, families, orchestras, arts organizations, and music lovers worldwide. As a leader in music education, WMI generates new knowledge through original research, which inform Carnegie Hall’s own programs and are also available as a resource to artists, organizations, and peers.

For more information, please visit: carnegiehall.org/education.


Great Music Teaching is produced by SOUND MADE PUBLIC.

Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute is generously supported by a wide range of corporations, foundations, government agencies, and individual donors. Click here for a complete list of funders.