Curriculum Diversity

After a busy summer, I was able to take some time this weekend to enjoy reading Anne Lanzilotti's insightful series on Building Curriculum Diversity, published by New Music Box this past July.

The most lucid moment in my reading was in Part Three of the series, where Lanzilotti shares a portion of an interview with violinist Jennifer Koh:

It is our responsibility as artists to advocate for artists and composers who happen to be women or people of color. I feel that we as artists and as an industry need to model and advocate for our entire community. And frankly, diversifying programming is the only way that classical music will survive. If our programming does not reflect the diversity of our society, then we are not serving our community and by extension, we are actively making ourselves irrelevant to society.

With classes starting at many institutions around the country these past few weeks, this is an especially good time to consider the diversity issues raised in these thoughtful essays. As many of us are preparing the storyline by which we will pass down the history of music to our current students, the resources offered would be immediately useful for anyone compiling musical examples. At a deeper level, the three essays also helped me to articulate things I already believed more clearly, gave me plenty of new artists to investigate, and left me with several sources that I would like to read and learn more from.