The range of disabilities encountered by band and orchestra directors are under-researched and poorly understood phenomena. This presentation will share the highly personal vignettes of three musicians who have worked through disabilities (neurological, learning, and psychological). The clinic will provide practical advice for the progressive educator who wishes to incorporate strategies to better reach neurodivergent or disabled band and orchestra students.
Jason Noble
- Biographical Information
Dr. Jason Noble
(he/him/his) currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music Education at
Lehman College, The City University of New York (CUNY), and concurrently serves
as Director of Instrumental Music Education Studies at New York University
(part-time). At Lehman College, he teaches graduate conducting, creative
teaching strategies for Master of Arts (M.A.T.) students seeking New York State
P12 music certification, and graduate and undergraduate music methods, materials,
research, and analysis. As a member of the NYU Core Music Education Faculty, he
conducts the NYU Wind Symphony, teaches instrumental conducting, and prepares
future music educators through the instrumental materials, techniques, and
conducting course sequence. He brings a twenty-two-year career of national and
international excellence in secondary and university band education, creative
music curricular reform, and progressive music education, having conducted
featured concerts sixteen times at Carnegie Hall and at many of the finest
concert halls across the world on six continents, from Sydney, Australia, to
Vienna, Austria, to Beijing, China. He holds degrees from Teachers College,
Columbia University (Ed.D.C.T., College Teaching of Music Education), where he
was the recipient of the Florence K. Geffen Endowed Fellowship, New York
University (M.A., Music Education) and the Frost School of Music, University of
Miami (B.M., Music Education, cum laude).
Dedicated to the pursuit of new music for wind band, he began in 2004 with the
commissioning of a new significant work, “Yosemite Autumn,” by composer Mark
Camphouse. Since that commissioning project, he has led commissions by composers
Kevin Day (“River Memoria”), (“Deep Blue”), Josh Trentadue (“Hilltop Run”),
Katahj Copley (“Uptilt”-2022) Harrison Collins (“Dark Convictions”), Julie
Giroux (“Always”), Catherine Likhuta “(Home Away from Home”), and Michael
Martin (“The Bridge that Hangs from the Sky”).
He and the Miami Coral Park High School band released a professionally
recorded CD, “Living a Musical Dream,” with Mark Custom Records in 2003, and
the Hanover Wind Symphony released a professional recording, “Icons” under his
direction with the same label in 2006. Ensembles under his direction have
consistently received national and international acclaim, and ensembles under
his direction have performed by exclusive competitive invitation at Carnegie
Hall (2003, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022), David Geffen
Hall at Lincoln Center (2020), Salzburg and Vienna, Austria (2009, 2015),
Prague, Czech Republic (2009, 2015), Gran Canaria, Spain (2010), Barcelona,
Spain (2010), London, England (2013), The Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland
(2013), Budapest, Hungary (2015), Belfast, Northern Ireland (2019), Dublin and
Cork, Ireland (2019), and Sydney and Melbourne, Australia (2017). He is in
frequent and high demand as a guest conductor, lecturer, band program consultant,
curriculum consultant, and music performance adjudicator across the United
States and internationally. His research interests include band education,
instrumental music education, neurodivergence in music education, diversity,
equity, and inclusion in music education, LGBTQIA+ studies in music education,
and philosophies of music education.
John Mackey (he/him) has written for orchestras (Brooklyn Philharmonic, New York Youth Symphony), theater (Dallas Theater Center), and extensively for dance (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Parsons Dance Company, New York City Ballet), but the majority of his work for the past decade has been for wind ensembles (the fancy name for concert bands), and his band catalog now receives annual performances numbering in the thousands.
Recent commissions include works for the BBC Singers, the Dallas Wind Symphony, military, high school, middle school, and university bands across America and Japan, and concertos for Joseph Alessi (principal trombone, New York Philharmonic) and Christopher Martin (principal trumpet, New York Philharmonic). In 2014, he became the youngest composer ever inducted into the American Bandmasters Association. In 2018, he received the Wladimir & Rhoda Lakond Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He resides in San Francisco, California, with his spouse, a philosopher who works on the ethics of technology, and also titles all of his pieces; and their cats, Noodle and Bloop.
A native of Marietta, Georgia, Michael Martin joined the trumpet section of the Boston Symphony and the Boston Pops as Fourth/Utility trumpet in October 2010. Mr. Martin attended Northwestern University where he received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in trumpet performance studying with Barbara Butler and Charles Geyer. Mr. Martin was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2006 and 2008, receiving the Roger Voisin Trumpet Award both summers. He has performed with orchestras across the country and around the world including the Atlanta, Baltimore, and Chicago symphonies and with the Pacific Music Festival of Sapporo, Japan, and the Grand Teton Music Festival of Jackson, Wyoming. He has performed as guest principal trumpet with the Honolulu Symphony and the Seoul Philharmonic and with the Malaysian Philharmonic of Kuala Lumpur. From 2006 to 2009, Michael was a regular member with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony. A champion of new music, Mr. Martin has performed with acclaimed contemporary music groups eighth blackbird and the Pacifica Quartet and has also performed with members of the Chicago Symphony as part of their "MusicNow" series at the Harris Theater.