As summer break is coming to a close, we’re excited to get back into Music Alive and the upcoming 2017-18 season. As you’ve been getting ready for the back to school season, so have we in getting the October 2017 issue ready for your classrooms!
To kick off this season, our feature stories in the October issue will cover two rather different realms of musical performance: Broadway, and the trend of ukulele singer-songwriters. One exists as a world of its own, while the other has had a longstanding yet changing role in pop culture.
In “The Road to Broadway,” we’ll aim to give your theater-minded students a primer on how they can get started on pursuing their dreams of performing on the famous circuit, with practical advice on what they can be doing now to gain both the confidence and skills they’ll need to be successful. We’ll be speaking with some young people currently on Broadway to add both their insights and personal experience to the story.
Hawaiian women with floral wreaths and ukuleles, 1910
Our story on the ukulele will take a more historical approach, covering the origins of the instrument and how its role in popular music has transformed over the past century. Readers will also walk away with a few tips on how they can develop their skills as a beginning ukuleleist.
Mainstay departments like Song of the Month, Listening Guide, and Cool Careers will keep their regular roles in the magazine. In Cool Careers, we’ll speak to production manager Marshall Freeman about how he helps to make concerts happen by coordinating food and related amenities for performers.
Lastly, our back page will be undergoing a bit of a reinvention to feature a new department that will celebrate musical inventors, and the many kinds of inventions that have contributed to the evolution of music. “Who Invented…” will throw the spotlight on an individual who has changed the course of music by inventing either an instrument, a new piece of technology, and/or a new style of music. Our first installment will feature Italian instrument maker Bartolomeo Cristofori, remembered for inventing both the harpsichord and the piano.
As always, we’re keeping our ears to the ground to find content that will help to keep your students engaged in music over the course of the upcoming school year. Here’s to another year of keeping the music alive!