This is an excerpt from a previously published blog on the site Singing in Popular Musics….
Eight years ago, I started a journey looking into schools to get a doctorate. At first, I started looking into CCM programs – but as most of you reading know, at the doctoral level they don’t exist. Especially for someone like me who doesn’t sing any classical music or musical theatre at a professional level (my background is jazz/songwriter). I finally chose a Music Education PhD with an emphasis in popular music at The University of Miami. I was also very fortunate to be granted a teaching assistantship, largely within the contemporary program (popular musics), where my duties included teaching private contemporary voice lessons, contemporary theory and ear training, songwriter’s ensembles, and songwriting classes.
My intention going in was to figure out how to design a curriculum for a CCM program to help singers gain the skills they would need to succeed in the music industry. Rather quickly however, both through working in the contemporary program and through the research I got involved in, I discovered that in order to really help these kinds of singers, I needed to understand the much larger world of Popular Music Education (PME) and Higher Popular Music Education (HPME). In current academic settings, this is where those singers (singing in popular musics) and their voice teachers would be housed.
My dissertation thus ended up being an examination of two HPME programs in the USA – how they started, how they developed their curriculum, what their goals were, what their outcomes are proposed to be – and in the meantime, developing a curricular framework for the construction of any HPME program.
Fast-forward eight years where I am now working in the intertwining circles of popular music, songwriting and contemporary voice. After finishing my PhD, I was hired as The Director of Contemporary Voice at The University of Miami. I loved and very proudly held this position for two years before choosing to leave and return to New York City in the Fall of 2019. During this time I also became involved with a non-profit organization, The Association for Popular Music Education (www.popularmusiceducation.org), which promotes popular music education at all levels, and I am currently its president. I present at as many conferences as I can in the fields of voice and music education have authored several papers, journal articles and book chapters on songwriting and contemporary/popular/commercial voice.
What I have observed in going to all these events and in being involved with APME is how much stronger of an education we could provide to contemporary vocalists if we started communicating more with each other across the disciplines of CCM and HPME/PME. There’s wonderful pedagogy and research being done in both areas – and if we can find a way to have more conversations to expand the circle I feel we can help these disciplines grow and flourish.
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