Reimagining the Classical Music Canon

The classical music world is increasingly coming to terms with a lack of opportunities, support, and recognition for people of color in the field. As part of this movement, Daniel Pesca , assistant professor of music, has developed initiatives designed to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in classical music, supported by awards from the Charlesmead Initiative for Arts Education and the Hrabowski Innovation Fund.

Pesca’s Charlesmead grant has funded a multi-year collaboration with the Carter School of Music at New Shiloh Baptist Church in Baltimore City. This partnership has fully funded the musical education of 10 students, ages 8 – 14, from the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. Each participating student has received an electric piano and takes piano classes at the Carter School, which Charlesmead jurors characterized as a “a key community and spiritual hub.”

Those students also participated in a Summer Enrichment Academy course with Pesca to further advance their studies. This year they will have opportunities to tour the UMBC campus, meet music majors, participate in workshops and masterclasses, and perform for the first time on professional concert grand pianos.

Pesca was awarded a Hrabowski Innovation Fund Award for Keys to Inclusion, a multi-year initiative to imagine a more inclusive piano canon. He has co-led an effort to bring music departments and piano studios from five institutions around the country together to research, perform, record, and teach the piano music of Black American composers.

“Many works by Black American composers are out of print or unpublished,” explains Pesca, “and many are not recorded or readily available.” He and partners from Northeastern Illinois University, San Diego State University, Denison University, and Loyola University New Orleans are working to change that.

Students at the five institutions will be empowered to grow as musicians as they enjoy the benefits of working with professionals from across the country, learning the process of making a high-level recording, and discovering unfamiliar repertoire. The fruits of this year-long effort will be shared via an online database, now under construction.

The group presented their preliminary findings at the 2021 National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy and at the 2022 Music Teachers National Association conference. In fall 2022, Keys to Inclusion participants met to further discuss their findings and to develop plans to expand their reach by encouraging other institutions to join the initiative as part of a larger conversation about inequities in representation in classical music.

– Tom Moore