Education & Community Engagement
Network (NNM) fosters new generations of musicians, composers and listeners of contemporary music through engaging, high-impact and interactive educational and outreach programs.
For opportunities for young composers (pre-collegiate)
see our Young Composers Resource Center (YCRC).
2022-2023 Season Education Programming and Outreach
Performance of Wildflower Composers Festival alum Danity Pike’s work Cassandra on May 7th Network concert
Reading and recording session with Network Ensemble players Sean Bailey, Hirono Oka, Thomas Kraines, and Charles Abramovic on April 17, 2023 of new student works at West Chester University
Presentation of Hale Smith’s Duo for Violin and Piano on February 23, 2023 with Carlos Santiago and Charles Abramovic to students at North East High School in collaboration with Jay Fluellen
Reading and recording session with Network Ensemble players Hirono Oka and Marc Rovetti on February 21, 2023 of five new student works at Haverford College
Reading and recording session with Network Ensemble players Hirono Oka, Sean Bailey, and Charles Abramovic on January 27, 2023 (rescheduled from previous semester) of seven new student works at Haverford College
2022 NNM/ACOSA Mann Center Partnership
Network for New Music performing at Northeast High School in Philadelphia on April 26, 2022.
All City Orchestra Summer Academy at the Mann (ACOSA) began as a two-week summer orchestra training camp for young instrumentalists in 2020 and has since expanded, reaching even more Philadelphia students throughout the winter and spring of 2022, the program’s second year of operation.
The program is a partnership between The Mann Center, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the School District of Philadelphia, Project 440, and Network for New Music. These organizations work in collaboration to facilitate a high-quality orchestra training experience at zero cost to local students. ACOSA is designed to provide students from 6th grade to 12th a growth opportunity, guiding students to work on technical playing skills.
In 2022, Network facilitated a series of in-school programs during regular class hours as part of this special partnership. Network reached 83 students in the School District of Philadelphia through our composition classes, which were among the very first in-person classroom experiences offered to any Philadelphia School District student in sixteen months. The instructors were Network Board Member Tom Whitman and Susanna Payne-Passmore, a doctoral candidate in the Composition program at the University of Pennsylvania. Students studied a wide variety of compositions during class session and worked collaboratively to create their own, which they performed before the full group during the final class session.
Network’s participation in ACOSA received excellent press coverage in such venues as:
The Inquirer - Nearly 100 Philly schoolkids practiced on Zoom with Philadelphia Orchestra virtuosos, and you’re invited to the grand finale
CBS News - CBS Evening News With Norah O'Donnell
WRTI Radio - How a Historic Philadelphia Music Program is Preparing Young Musicians for the Future—Virtually
WHYY - WHYY: You Oughta Know
2021 NNM/ACOSA MANN CENTER PARTNERSHIP
Vice President of Education & Community Engagement, and Naomi Gonzalez, along with Teaching Artist Tom Whitman, both NNM board members introduce and explain the program that includes performances of compositions by two of the fourteen students who created their own compositions in the summer of 2020: Divine Epps and Cyrano Rosentrator. Additional engaging composer interviews conducted by NNM Artistic Director, Thomas Schuttenhelm introduce the young composers and their process.
PROGRAM:
The Sunflower Warrior (for solo cello), by Ms. Epps, is inspired by the Kyoshi Warriors from the Avatar: The Last Airbender series and is performed here by Network Ensemble musician John Koen.
Mr. Rosentrator's arrangement of "Amazing Grace" for brass ensemble and percussion. While we were unable to arrange for a live Network Ensemble performance due to the restrictions on gathering and rehearsing during COVID-19, a digital version was created by Thomas Schuttenhelm.
March 2021 ACO program
Network partnered with the Philadelphia School District’s All City Orchestra after-school program, facilitated by the Mann Center's Vice President of Education & Community Engagement, Naomi Gonzalez in the spring of 2021. Composer Quinn Collins was engaged to offer an elective in music technology and composition entitled: Creative Digital Music.
Creative Digital Music was an interactive online course for students in the All City Orchestra program. Students were introduced to techniques for creating original music in Digital Audio Workstations, specifically via Soundtrap, a free online application which is available to all students with an internet connection. Topics included beat-making, audio synthesis, MIDI sequencing, audio effects, and melodic layering, which demonstrated accessible software resources for music-making. Composer Quinn Collins describes his experience teaching Creative Digital Music: “The students were easy to engage, enthusiastic about the tools we studied, displayed musicality, and always came to class with curious minds, asking insightful questions about the course material and also sought broader knowledge about topics at the intersection of music and technology.” The video you are about to view includes a portion of class activities where students learned to navigate the software to compose a short melody.