2026 Maine Music Educators Association Conference

Programming a concert is more than just picking the music. In this session we will look at some guidelines, practices and philosophies for putting together a program which meets your educational goals and is musically satisfying and fun for both the students and the audience.

In our ensemble classrooms, we aren’t given a curriculum book that tells us what to teach. This session will provide practical strategies for building and expanding your own curriculum, from scaffolding lessons to selecting musical concepts and repertoire. You’ll explore an approach that validates your teaching while encouraging students to actively engage with the concepts you present. Fully developed unit examples, along with free lesson plans and resources, will be shared for immediate use and adaptation. Leave equipped with tools to design a program where every rehearsal fosters musicianship, student engagement, and deeper connections to music.

Since 1974, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (NY) has been making music without a conductor. Its model calls every musician into deep engagement with the entirety of a composition, the rehearsal process, and every musician within the orchestra. Inspired by Orpheus, music educators at both middle school and high school levels of learning across the country have employed this “conductor- less” rehearsal and performance as a partner to traditional conductor-led music making. The benefits to students are transformational and illuminate the riches of meaningful engagement with the musical, artistic, and human dimensions of the large ensemble classroom.

This mini conducting symposium will serve as a workshop for educators looking to work on and improve their conducting to create a more meaningful and efficient rehearsal process. All students, no matter what age, can and do respond to conducting gestures effectively. The goal of this session is to provide 6 teachers a chance to conduct a student group on a piece of repertoire representative of what they would do in their own program and receive feedback on their conducting from guest clinicians. This session is primarily for elementary and middle level educators who would like to improve the conducting, however all are welcome to apply and encouraged to observe the workshop. Repertoire for the session will be new literature that will cause the session to double as a reading session for the observers of the session.

The first nine weeks of school can feel overwhelming for middle school band directors, especially new teachers and those entering the profession. This session offers a clear, supportive blueprint for designing those critical weeks with intention and confidence. Participants will explore a practical, week-by-week framework focused on establishing routines, building positive classroom culture, developing sound fundamentals, and fostering student buy-in before the first performance cycle. Emphasis is placed on simple, consistent systems for instruction, communication, and assessment. Attendees will leave with actionable tools and planning structures to help build an organized, confident, concert-ready band program before the first downbeat.

This session is designed for directors who conduct both instrumental and choral ensembles, but is open to anyone with an interest in refining their Choral gesture. In this session, we'll cover the similarities between instrumental and choral conducting, and also explore some simple and effective choral gestures in an effort to add clarity and simplicity to your practice.