SBO magazine

2014 Best Tools for Schools

Educators Highlight the Best Teaching Tools from the 2014 Winter NAMM Show

The annual Winter NAMM Show in Anaheim California is the place where hundreds of thousands of musical instruments, accessories, and related products are debuted to industry insiders. For the fourth consecutive year, educators at the music products convention combed the exhibit halls looking for the best products for classroom use in an array of different categories. Using an online voting process at sbomagazine.com and hard-copy ballots from attendees, music teachers made their selections, which culminated in a presentation of the 2014 Best Tools for Schools from the Winter NAMM Show.

2013 ’50 Directors Who Make a Difference’ Report

SBO’s 16th annual “50 Directors Who Make a Difference” report once again shines the spotlight on an incredible array of outstanding music educators from every corner of the United States. From directors of programs with champion marching bands like Ken Turner of River Bluff High School in Lexington, South Carolina to dedicated string teachers such as Elaine Sloane, who is in her 37th year at Radnor Middle School in Wayne, Pennsylvania, SBO readers have gone above and beyond in bringing forth the stories of the peers and mentors whom they admire.

Nominated by readers and selected by SBO’s editorial staff, this year’s report also provides the opportunity for a glimpse beyond the typical school music department, recognizing small programs like Gregory McCallum’s at Richmond (Va.) Community High School, an institution that focuses on gifted students from economically challenged backgrounds, and Cynthia Sibitzky’s work at Crawford Elementary School in Alaska, where she has been teaching music to the children of active duty service members at Eielson Air Force Base for nearly two decades.

UpClose: Dale Clevenger

“Music Is Life Itself”

Dale Clevenger has forged a virtually incomparable career in music. Recently stepping down after nearly a half century as the principal horn for one of the world’s great institutions, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Clevenger has been the driving force behind the CSO’s brass section, widely lauded as the preeminent of its kind. In addition to being a world-renowned performer – he even had a concerto written specifically for him by iconic American composer John Williams, which was debuted with the CSO in 2003 – Clevenger has also placed a special emphasis on education throughout the years, teaching at a number of colleges and universities, as well as participating in outreach programs through the professional ensembles with which he performed.

Now a professor of practice on the Brass Faculty at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, Clevenger devotes his time to assisting aspiring musicians to “reach for their dreams.” In a recent conversation with SBO, Clevenger looks back at some of the lessons that can be gleaned from his historic career and addresses some of the challenges facing professional ensembles, and the art form they perpetuate, going forward.