The job of music education in our culture is a challenging and exciting one. Till by Turning looks for ways to engage new, younger audiences. We hope to encourage participatory listening strategies and an enthusiasm for new sounds and creative endeavors.

Till by Turning's repertoire of new and experimental music offers particular pedagogical challenges and opportunities: In this music Classical ideas of melody, harmony, and meter are often eclipsed by more abstract concepts like timbre, space, or density. So as educators we seek playful and imagistic ways to access these concepts.

With these considerations in mind, Till by Turning develops educational programs that are based on audience participation, inviting students to collaborate with us creatively--asking them to speak up and interpret the aesthetic experiences that we're sharing.

Till by Turning at Von Humboldt Elementary and A+CCT

IWe planned an education project with Von Humboldt Elementary and A+CCT (Artists and Children Create Together), a free drop-in art center in 2005. A+CCT and Von Humboldt are both in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Aiming to link Von Humboldt's student with local arts resources, we invited the visual artists who staff A+CCT to collaborate with us in designing a multi-disciplinary program focusing on color, line, shape, and texture to both interpret and create musical works.

We created a loose, color-based code system through which the students drew the narratives of Sofia Gubaidulina's String Trio. The kids then used the same code to generate their own graphic scores, which we interpreted and played for them.

The work at Von Humboldt culminated in a week-long residency at A+CCT, where we led after school programs that included instrument building and structured improvising. We also recorded a neighborhood soundwalk, which documented Humboldt Park's city soundscape.

In a basic sense, the soundwalk epitomizes our educational goals: freeing the ear to experience unfamiliar sonic events while always ascribing credence and legitimacy to any response embedded in that process.

Gubaidulina in Maine

In October 2004 we took our program "Under the Tightrope: Chamber Music of Sofia Gubaidulina" on the road, playing in New York City and throughout eastern Maine. In Maine we performed programs for lower, middle, and high schools in the Blue Hill area, introducing ourselves, our instruments, and the sonic worlds of Gubaidulina's music. We were also guest artists on a women composers concert at the University of Maine at Orno.