Workshops

To book a workshop, please contact her directly for more information.

Community Engagement: Creating Meaningful Community Partnerships
“Outreach” and “Community Engagement” are buzzwords in the musical community. But how do we, as musicians, go about creating long-term, sustainable, mutually-beneficial relationships with community partners? In this workshop, I borrow from other fields, especially engaged pedagogy, to explore how other disciplines create meaningful and effective community partnerships and apply these interdisciplinary techniques to our work as musicians.

Conductors: Taming Tempo – A Hands-on Eurhythmics Workshop
This workshops focuses exclusively on developing tempo. Drawing upon eurhythmics, we focus on methods for learning tempos, developing confidence in one’s tempos, and honing the differences between tempos. When we recognize a difference between 60 and 62, for example, it allows us to catch ourselves rushing and dragging much sooner than we may otherwise. When conductors unshakably know exactly what 108 is beyond the shadow of a doubt, despite concert-day adrenaline, it creates more ease and confidence on stage. This is a skill-development workshop directed especially to conductors and designed to improve performance.

Composers: What Orchestration Books Forgot to Tell You – A Guide to Writing for Harp
This workshop is an in-depth look at writing for harp. The workshop opens hands-on experience exploring harp construction in order to better conceptualize the pedal system. The second part of this workshop looks at details often overlooked in orchestration manuals that are central to writing for harp. The third part succinctly demystifies the sound, notation, and production of extended techniques for harp.

Composers: Extended Techniques for Harp – New Vocabularies for New Repertoire
This workshop, designed for composers, focuses exclusively on extended techniques for harp. We will examine older techniques, from “crashing thunder” to using metal on the strings, as well as newer underutilized techniques such as electric fans, mallets, and more.

Electric Fans, Screwdrivers and More: A Hands-on Workshop on Extended Techniques for Harp
Designed specifically for harpists, this is a hands-on, experiential workshop to become more comfortable performing lesser-known extended techniques. This workshop focuses on creative exploration and confidence building while increasing your new music chops!

Eurhythmics
Jennifer has been the lead teacher in twelve semester-long eurhythmics classes and has experience in working with both early childhood and college-aged music students. She can customize eurhythmics workshops that last over several days as part of a residency or do a single 1-2 hour workshop depending on your needs and preferences.

Eurhythmics in the Private Lesson
Eurhythmics is a kinesthetic method of rhythmic education that focuses demystifying rhythm for students. Taking an embodied approach, it treats rhythm as a practicable, learnable skill. In this hands-on workshop, we will explore strategies from eurhythmics that are useful tools in a private lesson. Topics include techniques for teaching students to sustain an internal pulse, methods for teaching polyrhythms, strategies for swapping seamlessly between different meters, and systems that help organize rhythmic vocabulary.

Freelancing for Musicians: Habits to Establish Now To Thrive Later
First taught at UMass, Amherst, this workshop describes the routines, habits, and systems that emerging musicians can establish to enter the workforce as confident professionals. It clarifies some of the unwritten rules of the industry and empowers students to take charge of their own education. Covering everything from ettiquette (and thank you notes!) to networking to finding/creating opportunities to developing a niche, this workshop is an accessible launchpad for developing lifelong career practices.

History of Harp in American Jazz
Harp in jazz is no new-fangled thing. In fact the harp has a long history in American Jazz. This workshop explores some of the personalities and recordings in jazz harp.

Harp and Electronics
Part-lecture, part-demonstration, part-performance, this workshop explores the intersection between harp and electronics. Can be tailored to suit different audiences such as harpists, composers, or audience members.

Harp Masterclass
I love working with harpists in a masterclass setting. I work with all ages and emphasize creating a useful and supportive learning environment.

Honing the Internal Pulse: Methods for Developing Confidence In and Improving a Consistent Inner Pulse
Students are often told to “just feel it” or listen to their “internal pulse.” But what happens when you aren’t “feeling” it? How can you begin to change or improve such an internal process? Drawing upon eurhythmics, this workshop offers concrete strategies for externalizing and improving your internal pulse. Amateur musicians and professionals alike can benefit from the exercises in this workshop. When desired, this workshop can also provide activities useful for teaching rhythm and pulse to your music students.

Improvisation for Classical Musicians
This workshop is an accessible exploration of improvisation for classical musicians used to working from scores. We will draw upon techniques from transidomatic and transtylistic improvisation, acoustic ecology, fluxus, game pieces, and jazz. Open to all levels of experience.

Improvisation for Harpists
This workshop is a fun and creative chance for harpists to dive in and explore improvisation, open to all levels of experience. We will draw upon techniques from transidomatic and transtylistic improvisation, acoustic ecology, fluxus, game pieces, and jazz. We will also address some of the harp-specific concerns in improvisation such as setting and modifying pedals in tonal improvisation and the vocabulary of extended techniques in avant-garde improvisation.

Mixed Meter Mastery: Learning to Seemlessly Swap Between Meters Using Eurhythmics
Particularly helpful for musicians working in new music, this workshop introduces exercises from eurhythmics for swiftly adapting to meter change and gracefully performing mixed-meter passages. This workshop also gives you tools to improve sight-reading repertoire with frequent meter changes.

Music Educators: Using Eurhythmics in Classroom Teaching
Students are often told to “just feel it” or listen to their “internal pulse.” But what happens when you aren’t “feeling” it? How can you begin to change or improve such an internal process? Eurhythmics is a kinesthetic method of rhythmic education that focuses demystifying rhythm for students. Taking an embodied approach, it treats rhythm as a practicable, learnable skill. In this hands-on workshop, we will explore strategies from eurhythmics that are useful tools in a classroom teaching. Topics include techniques for teaching students to sustain an internal pulse, methods for teaching polyrhythms, strategies for swapping seamlessly between different meters, and systems that help organize rhythmic vocabulary.

Polyrhythms: An Embodied Approach to Making Cross-rhythms as Straight-Forward as Eighth Notes
Through eurhythmics, resultant rhythms, and learning exercises that combine auditory, visual, and kinesthetic cues, we can become just as confident in performing cross-rhythms as we are performing eighth notes. There is a core battery of cross-rhythms this workshop covers but it can be adjusted to focus on a cross-rhythm of your choice, whether it is two against three or ten against eleven.

Social Networks of Innovation: An Examination of How Extended Techniques Emerge from Interlocking Social Networks
A lecture on how musicians can better understand the development of extended techniques through tracing composers’ social networks. As a case study, I presented my research on the relationship between Henry Cowell and Carlos Salzedo.

Soundscapes: Creative Music Education Techniques from Acoustic Ecology and Eurhythmics
Acoustic ecology and eurhythmics offer a wealth of music education exercises for a wide variety of age groups. One of the benefits of both acoustic ecology and eurhythmics is that they do not necessarily require access to instruments. This workshop provides particularly useful resources for musicians working to do music education in schools or after-school programs with limited resources or budget.