Achieved kids’s music educator, music historian and clarinetist Katherine Palmer and award-winning percussionist, composer and youngsters’s guide creator Cory Hills have been chosen as the primary two Fellows of the newly created Gretsch Fellowship in Youngsters’s Music on the Fred Rogers Middle for Early Studying and Youngsters’s Media at St. Vincent Faculty.
With help from Fred and Dinah Gretsch and their household, the Gretsch Fellowship in Youngsters’s Media was created to conduct analysis and develop finest practices in music experiences for kids inside the ethos and imaginative and prescient of the Fred Rogers Middle and its mission “to assist kids develop as assured, competent and caring human beings.
Hills and Palmer had been chosen from a aggressive discipline of candidates by a panel of six St. Vincent Faculty and Fred Rogers Middle directors together with Father Paul R. Taylor, OSB, St. Vincent Faculty president; Dr. Roberta Schomburg, government director of the Fred Rogers Middle; Dr. Jeff Mallory, St. Vincent Faculty government vp; David Hollenbaugh, St. Vincent Faculty vp for institutional development; and Dr. Dana Winters, Fred Rogers Middle director of Easy Interactions and educational programming and assistant professor of kid and household research.
“Dinah and I wish to thank the devoted staff at St. Vincent Faculty for locating these Fellows,” mentioned Fred Gretsch, CEO of Fred Gretsch Enterprises. “They each deliver a wealth of data, distinctive experiences and shared ardour for music and youngsters. We now problem Ms. Palmer and Mr. Hills to grab this chance to the fullest. Be part of us in persevering with the legacy of Fred Rogers by enriching the lives of youngsters by means of music.”
“The Fred Rogers Middle is grateful to the Gretsch Household Basis for help in sponsoring the 2 Gretsch Music Fellows who will be part of the Fred Rogers Middle,” mentioned Schomburg. “The Fellows had been chosen from a pool of greater than 40 purposes from everywhere in the nation. The Gretsch Music Fellows will carry ahead the legacy of Fred Rogers by means of their keystone initiatives that have interaction kids, their households, their academics and their communities in celebrating the position of musical expression in bringing about pleasure, happiness and studying within the lives of youngsters.”
Palmer, who will start her one-year fellowship in January, holds a bachelor’s diploma in music (clarinet) from the College of Miami, in addition to a grasp of music (clarinet), grasp of arts (ethnomusicology) and doctorate of musical arts from Arizona State College. She is presently the curator of training on the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix, Arizona, the place she is in control of creating and educating interdisciplinary, ethnomusicological content material.
“I used to be past thrilled to be taught that I had been chosen for the fellowship,” mentioned Palmer, an avid admirer of Fred Rogers. “Fred Rogers’ work has deeply impacted my very own educating and improvement. To be related to the Fred Rogers Middle is a honest honor.”
She has been instrumental in molding MIM’s instructional strategy and overseeing content material associated to MIMkids courses, discipline journeys, skilled improvement, volunteer docent coaching and inventive growing old periods. She additionally serves as a college affiliate within the Herbert Institute of Design and the Arts at Arizona State College and adjunct teacher at Paradise Valley Group Faculty. She can also be the chief director of Daraja Music Initiative (DMI), a non-profit group that gives music and environmental conservation training within the Kilimanjaro Area of Tanzania to secondary college students. Aiming to bridge the humanities and sciences, DMI promotes sustainability of African Blackwood timber from which clarinets, amongst different devices, are constructed.
Palmer performs with the Mill Ave Chamber Gamers, a Phoenix-based woodwind quintet, and has appeared with a wide range of musical teams all through Arizona together with the Arizona Musicfest, the Phoenix Symphony and the Phoenix Theatre Firm. Along with frequent nationwide and regional appearances, Palmer has introduced papers, workshops and performances at worldwide conferences for the Faculty Music Society, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Worldwide Clarinet Affiliation’s ClarinetFest and the Worldwide Society for Music Schooling.
Palmer plans to pursue the idea of ‘increasing the neighborhood’ by carefully analyzing the Fred Rogers Middle’s huge archives to find out about Rogers’s use of music in his neighborhood, researching intersections between finest practices in varied streams of multicultural training and creating a mannequin that comes with music listening and music making as a sensible information for constructing cultural open-mindedness for households and younger kids.
“Youngsters reside inherently musical lives,” mentioned Palmer, “and as a musician, music educator and ethnomusicologist, I’ve spent the final decade of my profession immersed within the musical worlds and tradition of younger kids. I’ve continued to pursue and have interaction on this work as a result of I consider that offering genuine musical experiences to kids, very similar to Fred Rogers did, aids of their cognitive and bodily improvement.
“Moreover, I consider that offering numerous and genuine world music experiences aids in constructing cultural consciousness, competency and compassion. In an everchanging world atmosphere, acceptance of range and understanding of distinction empowers younger kids to assemble a world that aligns with the Fred Rogers Middle’s mission of rising ‘assured, competent and caring human beings.”
Palmer is keen to start her appointment and says her first order of enterprise is to discover the huge Fred Rogers archive within the Rogers Middle to check his compositional practices and find out how he used music to advertise empathy.
“From these findings,” mentioned Palmer, “I hope to create a mannequin for music listening and music making that households, caregivers and educators can use with younger kids.”
Grammy award-winner Hills will start his one-year appointment in September 2021. An energetic performer, composer and recording artist in Los Angeles, in addition to a member of the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, he holds a bachelor’s diploma in music from Northwestern College, a grasp of music efficiency from Queensland Conservatorium, a grasp of music concept from the College of Kansas and a doctorate of musical arts from the College of Kansas. He has individually commissioned and premiered greater than 150 authentic works for percussion and has given solo and chamber recitals throughout the U.S., Australia, Europe, New Zealand, China and Mexico.
A passionate advocate for kids’s music training, Hills is honored to be chosen as a Gretsch Fellow and speaks glowingly of the lasting influence that Rogers has had on him since childhood.
“As a baby of the 80s,” mentioned Hills, “I used to be tremendously influenced by Mr. Rogers, as I think about tens of millions of youngsters around the globe had been. Particularly, I used to be at all times impressed with how he by no means spoke right down to a baby – reasonably, he handled them as mental friends, able to understanding complicated points. After I noticed the connection between music, early childhood training and Mr. Rogers, I spotted that this was a dream alternative. To prime it off, the Gretsch household is sponsoring this fellowship and Gretsch is thought within the percussion world for making among the highest high quality drums for greater than 100 years.
“I’m extraordinarily honored to obtain this Fellowship and, extra importantly, can not wait to get to work. One of the best half is that I can attain a extra numerous kids’s viewers all through the nation and overseas.”
In 2009, whereas a fellow at Institute Fabrica in Italy, Hills launched this system Progressive Storytelling, which brings classical music and storytelling to kids in underserved communities. Over that span, he has given greater than 600 performances to greater than 170,000 kids in 10 international locations, whereas additionally releasing two award-winning kids’s albums (“The Misplaced Bicycle” and “Drum Manufacturing unit”) and three kids’s books (“The Misplaced Bicycle,” “Beatrice and the POGs” and “Beatrice and the Seek for the Orb”).
“Merely put,” he mentioned, “I’m completely obsessed with all issues associated to elementary arts training.”
Throughout his fellowship on the Rogers Middle, Hills will channel this ardour to create a 50-minute music efficiency/meeting program for elementary colleges, utilizing analysis from the Fred Rogers Archive to discover alternative ways through which Rogers tackled tough social ideas and subjects with kids.
“This will probably be an anti-bullying program,” he mentioned, “that facilities on points associated to social media and the significance of self-confidence and shallowness. There are many sources obtainable for center and highschool college students, however these subjects have typically been deemed too complicated or too mature for younger kids.
“The Archive is a treasure trove of data centered on sound instructional philosophy and analysis and I sit up for making use of this analysis to the Twenty first-century youngster.”
