2026 Maine Music Educators Association Conference

Small bands can be great bands! Join this fast-paced, hands-on session exploring tools and tactics specifically geared towards achieving excellence with unideal instrumentation. Topics will include repertoire selection as well as rehearsal techniques for developing blend and balance, building confidence in sight-reading, and differentiating instruction. Participants will leave with ready-to-use tools to incorporate into their daily teaching. This session is ideal for directors at "one band schools" or at schools with a non-auditioned, open-enrollment band, and it will address both concert and marching band settings.

Pep band and marching band are more than spirit ensembles, they’re powerful tools for growing and strengthening your overall band program. This session explores practical strategies to boost visibility, enhance recruitment, and elevate musicianship through high-energy, community-focused ensembles. Most of all, how to build a strong community and relationships within your band program. Learn how to leverage game-day and field performance opportunities to build excitement, develop leadership, and support a thriving, well-rounded music program.

In this session, we will move beyond conducting time and explore
possibilities for improved artistic communication in rehearsals and
performance. We'll examine pragmatic ways to practice
expressive gesture, train your ensembles to be responsive to
expressive conducting, and apply these skills to repertoire. Bring
your batons!

In this session, UMaine undergraduates present expanded versions of their final project for coursework in which they took a critical look at common practices in PK–12 music education. Situated in current research, the preservice teachers identify a variety of practices—including elementary students receiving general music instruction once a week and the experiences of students with disabilities in beginner band—which they then analyze and problematize through a lens of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. The undergraduate students provide ideas to address the deficits in music education in order to create opportunities for all PK-12 students.