At the start of each week Music Director Zach Redler sends every student in the department a piece of music and a google form calling on students to answer questions like “In what genre would you classify the piece? Why?” or “Did you enjoy the piece?” 

This week’s Music of the Week is Jessie Montgomery’s “Peace for clarinet and piano” (2020). In previous installments, though. Mx. Redler had students listening to songs like Frank Zappa’s “Montana,” and Florence & The Machine’s “Cosmic Love,” which is to say that all music is Music of the Week material.  

The questions posed on the form Mx. Redler shares each week are low-threshold questions that meet students where they are as students of music. The most music adept and most novice alike can engage - and really, that’s the whole MO of Redler’s approach. Earlier this week, the Quad crashed Group Piano during D-Block and saw this approach on full display. Helen R. ‘26 was in a practice room working her way through a concerto by Francis Poulenc, while in the classroom proper a student was saying to Mx. Redler “I don’t understand what a half step means” without the slightest bit of self-consciousness in her voice. Both students were engaged and learning, being met where they were.

In Music and Social Change, another department offering, students are learning about music’s place in the social totality, looking at how music functions within discourses on issues like race and bodily autonomy. Turns out music is not composed or performed in a vacuum - watch Kendrick Lamar's half-time show, listen to Billie Holliday's rendition of Abel Meeropol's "Strange Fruit," or wonder at how the Village People's "Y.M.C.A" become a campaign-trail anthem for President Trump.