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School of Music

Music Faculty Research Featured in Music Educators Journal

Two School of Music faculty members and one graduate recently had articles published in the March edition of Music Educators Journal (MEJ), a national publication by the National Association for Music Education.

Paul Broomhead, a professor of Music Education, and Jon Skidmore, an adjunct faculty of Music Performance, coauthored the article, “Creating an Expressive Performance Mindset.” Broomhead and Skidmore offer a method that helps music teachers and students establish an environment of safety, risk-taking, self-awareness and personal responsibility in order to bring out the best performances in the musicians. “Musically Meaningful: The Interpersonal Goals of Performance,” written by SOM graduate Rebecca Roesler, was also published.

MEJ “offers peer-reviewed scholarly and practical articles on music teaching approaches and philosophies.” Broomhead, Skidmore and Roesler have done just that.

“The research that Paul and I did only validated what we both believe,” Skidmore said. “When students design their mindset and have the tools to cope when there is a negative shift, they progress and move past what would have stopped them in the past.”

Skidmore said this mindset has been in the works for years.

“I have been teaching this and other tools to BYU students for over 20 years,” Skidmore said. “I see it helping them in all aspects of their lives.”

Broomhead has also seen the benefits of applying these techniques.

“I use these principles in the choir I teach each semester to enhance students' willingness to surrender themselves fully into the artistic and expressive experience,” Broomhead said.

Broomhead mentioned that his research has helped students to reach potential they didn’t know they had.

“I have studied expressive performance instruction in various ways through the years, but always had the feeling that the biggest factor in my choir students was courage, or an expansion of comfort zones,” Broomhead said.

To read these articles, visit http://mej.sagepub.com/.