Adrian Gordan [00:00:00]:
When you want young students to start developing ideas on their own, they first have to have somewhat of a mastery over the language. Then they can start to extrapolate and make ideas and be creative. And it doesn’t require absolute mastery. You don’t need to be studying the English or whatever language from birth till 50 or 60 years old or be the Nobel laureate poet or whatever. You can start with creativity at the very youngest ages, as long as you have even the first bits of literacy.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:35]:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:38]:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:40]:
This is the fueling Creativity and Education podcast.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:44]:
On this show, we’ll be talking about creativity topics and how they apply to the field of education.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:49]:
We’ll be speaking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and digging deeper into new and varying perspectives of creativity, all with the.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:00]:
Goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers and parents with knowledge they can use at home or in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:08]:
So let’s begin.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:10]:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And today we welcome Adrian Gordon, an internationally performed composer and seasoned music educator. Mr. Gordon is director of orchestras at Province Day School and founder of Leap Year Music Publishing, which publishes string music for elementary, middle, and high school assembles. He is also the author of the book Note to Self, a music director’s guide for transitioning to a new school and building a thriving music program. Adrian, welcome to the podcast.

Adrian Gordan [00:01:45]:
Hey, thank you guys so much for having me.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:47]:
Cindy, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure this is the first episode that we’ve had someone talk exclusively about music and the relationship of music and creativity. Am I right, Cindy?

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:59]:
That is absolutely correct. We have not had anyone with the musical background. We’ve had a lot of artists, and Matt and I actually have a theater background, but we haven’t had anyone with a music teaching background. So welcome.

Adrian Gordan [00:02:13]:
Yeah, glad to be the first.

Matthew Worwood [00:02:16]:
You’ve got an interesting career because you started outside the school system and then you kind of transitioned into the school system. So perhaps you could start off by telling us a little bit about your background and that transitional journey that took.

Adrian Gordan [00:02:28]:
Place before I got started in the classroom. I was doing a lot of songwriting, a lot of singing and performing, publishing, and that was my main focus. That was my main goal. I love the idea of creating music. I love the idea of creating melodies on my guitar, and that was a big deal for me. And then I went to school and got a deeper understanding and deeper education on all that. And then when I got into the classroom, I always say it was really fun watching the light bulbs in the students heads go off and seeing how young you could get these students involved with music and develop a deep appreciation and just watch them pursue music and develop that passion for it. So that’s been really fun for me.

Adrian Gordan [00:03:18]:
But, yeah, now I am in the classroom setting. I’m in the orchestral setting. I teach string orchestra for grade five through twelve, and that’s been wonderful because I get to watch students learn from scratch. They don’t know anything. They walk in the door, a blank slate, and they come in knowing nothing. And then all of a sudden, you start to see them blossom and develop into these wonderful musicians, creative people. And they have these lifelong pursuits in music, which is fantastic.

Cyndi Burnett [00:03:48]:
I would love to hear more about your own process for creating music. What do you go through when you’re creating a piece of music?

Adrian Gordan [00:03:54]:
I would say it changes every single time. But what I’ve done, I’ve kind of created a compositional mind map, and what that does, it kind of guides my thinking. So I start to think about, what am I envisioning for this next piece? Whether it’s a song, whether it’s an instrumental piece. I’ll think about instrumentation. What instrument am I hearing? Where do I envision? Then I like to think about, okay, is this going to be a fast tempo? Is it a slow tempo? Is it medium tempo? So I’m starting to give myself parameters for what this piece is going to look like. I also think it’s important to draw pictures, so I end up drawing pictures, too, so I can have imagery of where I want this piece to go. And then any words that come to mind, any top of mind words, just whatever first thing I think of, I’ll write that down on that compositional mind map. And from there, I start to craft the ideas.

Adrian Gordan [00:04:54]:
And a lot of times when I get stuck or I have these bouts of writer’s block, what I tend to do is set limitations. So I made a video not too long ago where I talk about how I was writing something, and I had this really big bout of writer’s block, and I ended up giving myself a limitation for the musicians out there of arpeggios. So I said, okay, let me think about arpeggios. Just think about arpeggios. Don’t think about anything else and see what you can come up with. Because the idea of looking at that blank page and not knowing which direction to go, it’s kind of daunting so when you give yourself those limitations, it’s not to say that you stay there, but it just becomes a starting point where you can really branch out and grow and develop your ideas from there.

Matthew Worwood [00:05:41]:
And that sounds like a really interesting, dare I say, kind of divergent thinking, ideation type activity associated with music. And I’m just wondering, have you brought some of these activities or processes that you have in your professional environment into the curriculum?

Adrian Gordan [00:05:59]:
Yeah, right now, actually, I’m really excited. I’m working with a youth orchestra. I’ve been commissioned to do a piece where I’m kind of weaving all their mini compositions together into a larger work. And we’ve talked about using this compositional mind map. What are you seeing? What colors do you think of? What sounds? Do you imagine? What pictures have you come up with? I’m taking all these ideas from these students, and we’re kind of weaving them together into this larger, full orchestral work, which is going to be really fun. But, yeah, that’s the best way right now. I can think of that. I’m kind of weaving all these things together with students in curriculum.

Matthew Worwood [00:06:38]:
This sounds fantastic. And for someone who doesn’t have a music background, I was wondering if you have any resources or examples of what you’re talking about that we can potentially add as a link to the show.

Adrian Gordan [00:06:51]:
Yeah, I have a copy, a PDF copy of that compositional mind map, and I can send it to you guys so you can link it in the show notes. That’s okay.

Matthew Worwood [00:07:02]:
Done. So long as you’re happy with that.

Adrian Gordan [00:07:04]:
Done.

Matthew Worwood [00:07:04]:
So our listeners are hearing the fact that just scroll down and there’ll be a link to this, because I don’t know about you, Cindy, but I’ve never really heard of this type of activity. But it seems so creative and a wonderful way of engaging students’creativity through the process of making music.

Cyndi Burnett [00:07:19]:
I think it sounds so much fun, and it actually makes me think about, how could I do that as an adult learning something and then thinking about all of the elements that come with music and how to weave those together and then taking all of the different students and trying to create one piece, I think sounds magical. When will you be doing this?

Adrian Gordan [00:07:41]:
Well, we’ve already started. It’s with the Empire State Youth Orchestra in Albany, New York. So we already started. We’ve taken what’s really cool. We’ve taken some videos of their improvisational conversations. So they’ve sat down two students at a time, and they’ve just done improvisations with each other, just instrumentally talking back and forth. And from there, I’m pulling these ideas that the students have come up with and also some of their mini compositions. So they’ve taken this compositional mind map, and they’ve gone through it, and they’ve made some mini compositions, and from the improvisations, from the mini compositions, and also, I guess they had just some kind of graph or chart where they’ve written down a couple of words that come to mind when they hear the theme of the piece.

Adrian Gordan [00:08:27]:
So I’m taking a lot of these words, these improvisations, this mini compositions, and really creating this larger work, which is really, really interesting. And I’ve been able to sit with the students and talk with them remotely, ask them what comes to mind. So, one of the questions, I just met with a group of the students two days ago. So one of the first questions I asked them is, hey, if I’m your buddy, and I tell you, this is a theme, and the theme is stop the violence, show kindness. If I say, hey, I got to show you this new track. It’s called stop the violence, show kindness. What’s the first instrument that you imagine you would hear on that track? When I hit the play button. And that’s really great because it starts the thought process of, okay, what am I hearing? There’s no right or wrong answer.

Adrian Gordan [00:09:13]:
It’s really, what do I see? What do I envision? And one of the great things through this whole creative process is watching the students all come up with common answers. So the most common instrument that I’m hearing from them is the cello. I don’t know why, but that’s what they envision. So now I’m going to take their responses and make that a part of the composition. So it’s really a really nice group effort, a collaborative work, which I’m super excited about.

Cyndi Burnett [00:09:43]:
What age level are you doing that with?

Adrian Gordan [00:09:45]:
This is the tricky part. It’s going to be for first grade all the way through twelveth grade. So we have quite a range. Yeah, it’s quite a range. So right now, I’ve spoken to all the younger ones who are, I think, in first and second grade. I’ve spoken to middle school, and I believe today I’m actually speaking to some of the high school students and get their input. So from all of this information, then I’m just going to go through and sift through and see what can be used and what can be woven together to make a really nice piece that fits the theme but also incorporates a lot of their, you know, it’s really just a grand work. Of collaboration between me and all the students.

Cyndi Burnett [00:10:27]:
It sounds wonderful, and it reminds me of the work of Teresa Moble, who has done work on a componential model of creativity, where she looks at domain skills and creativity skills. And when I think about music, and my son is a musician, he’s only 15, but he is a musician, and he plays the saxophone, the alto sax, and he has to learn the domain skills of being able to identify the notes and play the notes. But then there’s these creativity skills, and a lot of that comes out with the improvisation in terms of how do I create these notes into something else? So I think that’s a beautiful way to look at the work that you’re doing is through these domain skills that you’re teaching them about the notes and how to play and how to put the right pressure on the various instruments. And then you have these skills of this improvisation that goes back and forth where I think the creative magic actually happens in music education. What are your thoughts on that?

Adrian Gordan [00:11:25]:
What’s funny is you’re referring to literacy. So you’re talking about that literacy component in making music where, yeah, there are those elements that you have to develop with note reading, understanding, technique. Those have to happen just the same that you see in language. When you want young students to start developing ideas on their own, they first have to have somewhat of a mastery over the language. Then they can start to extrapolate and make ideas and be creative. And it doesn’t require absolute mastery. You don’t need to be studying the English or whatever language from birth till 50 or 60 years old or be the Nobel laureate poet or whatever. You can start with creativity at the very youngest ages, as long as you have even the first bits of literacy.

Adrian Gordan [00:12:16]:
And that’s what I think is what you’re alluding to with your son. He has some of these literacy components with understanding how to play the instrument, how to create sound, characteristic sound on the instrument, how to read. And from there, he’s starting to develop his own ideas. And you can see that in improvisation. And yes, there is jazz improvisation, but there also is improvisation beyond that, where you can just start playing and creating sounds that whatever you think is pleasing to you, whatever you want, really. It doesn’t have to be in a specific genre or specific style. It could be whatever you want. And I think that’s really important to start out at a young age.

Adrian Gordan [00:12:55]:
You can do it through instrumental music. It can be through vocal music, which I think is a little bit more accessible. And you’ll see a lot of that in the general music class, there is validity to starting with literacy at the very beginning stages, but then immediately moving to creativity and developing creativity alongside of the literacy component.

Matthew Worwood [00:13:16]:
And I love the connection that you made there, Cindy, and your response to that question. Adrian, and I certainly can relate to the improvisation piece because I would say that my eldest, who plays the piano expresses divergent thinking in lots of different domains and quite often wanting to deviate from scripts and do his own thing. And typically, when he gets his piece at the piano, I’ve noticed that he would typically play the piece in a very different way every time he plays it. Even when we end up at his piano recital, I’m hearing a completely different song and emotion. But the other piece that I commend you for is how you’ve kind of been able to kind of make this applicable throughout the grades. I mean, it’s such a huge age group that you’re spanning there from first grade all the way to high school. You’re able to engage everyone and engage their creativity by simply asking that very great, inviting question of what do you think of when you hear this theme? And I’m just sitting there and I’m just wondering how many other subjects in school provide that opportunity. And my gut feeling is probably not that many.

Matthew Worwood [00:14:24]:
I feel like you’re offering something to this community that they might not be getting in other school experiences.

Adrian Gordan [00:14:30]:
Yeah. And this is kind of out of my domain, but when I was growing up, I kind of felt like these subjects that we’re teaching, these core subjects, yeah, they’re important, but can we couple them with something that is important and relevant to the students? So, for example, if you have a student who is crazy about sports, you’re going to have a hard time catching them in a math class. But what if you incorporated sports statistics with math so that the student isn’t just thinking like, oh, I’m just sitting here, this is not applicable. What if we talked about, okay, your experience in sports, let’s talk about how this relates. How are we going to keep stats of everything you see on the quarter, on the field, make it all come together, make it relevant for the students? I always felt that was a missing component in education, and I think you’re going to see a lot heavier push for excellence because it’s something that’s so important to them. Again, I’m speaking outside of my realm of expertise, but I always felt that those were important components that were missing from core education classes.

Cyndi Burnett [00:15:40]:
For those listening who are charged with leading a music program at their school, or trying to integrate music education with little resources. What do you think? Adrian makes a good music program for one.

Adrian Gordan [00:15:53]:
Everybody needs to feel welcome. I think everybody needs to feel like they have a place in your program. And I also think that the focus, it needs to be on people. I always talk about how, yes, we are in the field of music, but more so, we’re in the field of people. And I think if we remember that, we’re going to be building stronger programs, and music happens to be the vehicle to develop social skills. I think character skills, like responsibility, collaboration, all these things that are really important that we want students to get. Those are important for us to remember as we start building our programs. Those are the ideas that we want to pass along to our students.

Adrian Gordan [00:16:38]:
So if we keep that at the forefront of our thinking, I think those successful programs will fall in line.

Matthew Worwood [00:16:43]:
I’m finding myself making a connection to innovation spaces in a weird way. We’ve done a few different shows around the maker movement and innovation spaces, and they typically center around technology. There’s a relationship to stEm. In a previous episode with Michael Mino, he was talking about kind of know the relationship between maker spaces and shop of the past. But we’ve kind of sometimes made this connection that it’s like a physical space or an experience that you’re providing outside of that core curriculum, outside of the kind of, like, traditional model of education. And from what you’re sharing, this kind of project based learning approach that’s highly inviting to various different elements of creativity. It strikes me that in some ways, you’re actually providing the type of learning experience that we quite often associate with maker spaces. And so I’m just wondering, what’s your take on all of that?

Adrian Gordan [00:17:38]:
Well, I kind of feel like the music classroom is a maker space because you are creating, and there’s a lot of things that are not written on the paper. We talk about musicality. Some things are implied in the music. So, for example, you see repeated notes in the music. Typically, a composer won’t write exactly what they want you to do, but you as a musician will understand, okay, it’s a repeated figure. What can I do to add musicality, make it more interesting? So those are the times where you can start asking questions, hey, orchestra or a band or a choir, what can we do to kind of shape this phrase? So, not only are you performing, but you’re also, in some cases, arranging the music. You have the setting, but now we’re adding these nuances to it, and you’re allowing the students to have room to build and to create and arrange, even if it’s in the smallest way, even these small ways where you’re just inquiring and probing about, how can we make this music different or more interesting, more nuanced, more detailed? Whatever it is, you’re giving them that space. So I always felt like the music classroom is just in and of itself a maker space where there’s just nothing but creativity going on if you let it be.

Matthew Worwood [00:18:59]:
And you’ve just described the iterative process, which quite often is a significant core of makerspaces, is this idea of constantly refining your work? Out of curiosity, now I’ve made this connection with makerspaces. Are there any apps that you know that might facilitate a kind of core music activity in a makerspace?

Adrian Gordan [00:19:21]:
One app that I am really fond of, it’s called soundtrap, and it’s actually owned by Spotify, and it has its educational applications. But what it does, it allows students to collaborate from anywhere. They have their digital audio workstation in the browser. You have your digital audio workstation in the browser. You can add whatever you want, like vocals, you can add instrumentals. You can add loops, pre recorded loops, into your music, so you can really start collaborative. You have the collaborative process. You have the arranging process, really, you can make whatever you want.

Adrian Gordan [00:19:56]:
So during COVID that was a really great app and tool to use for my students so that they could work remotely, develop whatever they want. So I would say something like, I want you guys to develop your own composition. The only stipulation that I have is that your instrument has to be played live on there, so you can do whatever you want. You can add loops to it. You can make it something holiday related, whatever you want. And I just have one stipulation, that your instrument is added into it. And what we ended up doing is, at the concert, we ended up doing a little Grammys award show where we judged all the compositions and gave out some itunes gift cards for the best composition. So it was a lot of fun, but the kids enjoyed it.

Adrian Gordan [00:20:43]:
They were able to collaborate. We put them in groups of three, four, or five kids at a time, and they took it seriously. It was a lot of fun to watch them build their own compositions and be able to do that anytime, any place. Some days, we would work on it in class, and they would be on their stations, and they could be at home. They could be recording their instruments. It was fantastic. So I would highly recommend that soundtrack.

Cyndi Burnett [00:21:08]:
That sounds like so much fun. So let’s talk about a thriving music program. What does a thriving music program actually look like?

Adrian Gordan [00:21:17]:
Like I said before, I think if you have a program that’s focused on inclusion where everybody feels welcome, you’ve met students where they are in terms of their proficiency, and you build from there. You are a caring leader who makes sure that you’re seeing past the content and checking in with the students and building relationships with them, but also developing a level and an expectation of excellence. I think there is that component where you want to develop excellence. I always tell my students, we all love music and we all like to go to concerts. How many concerts do you want to go to where you pay a lot of money to hear, like, a D plus concert? And the students generally will say, no, if I’m paying good money for that, I’d like to hear an A plus concert. Well, I say the same thing about your friends and your family. Maybe they’re not paying money, but they’re paying with their time, and we want to respect that and make sure that we’re showing up prepared so that we don’t dishonor their time. So I think a program that’s also centered on building excellence, and it doesn’t mean perfection, but constant progress and show markers of progress in your playing and your understanding of music, I think that’s really important.

Matthew Worwood [00:22:36]:
Now, this question is directly for music educators and the focus of your book, perhaps new music educators who are transitioning to school, at least in my son’s school. I look at the kind of music teacher and how much responsibility they take on during the festive period where they’ve got the Thanksgiving concert and then they’ve got the holidays concert that comes up in just three or four weeks later. It seems to me there’s a lot of stress. There’s a lot of things on their shoulders. They’re having to coordinate a lot. Think about some of the examples that you shared. How does a new music teacher balance this and something that you’ve touched on in your book also maintain kind of good mental health throughout this process?

Adrian Gordan [00:23:15]:
One of the big things is to write stuff down. So that’s been a big thing for me. I’ve been really reliant on my calendar and on my task list. I have a digital one Google task that just helps me organize my thoughts and my priorities. And then in the book, I talk about letting your concerts embody your vision of excellence, which means that we don’t over program. As music educators, we understand that quality is going to be better than quantity. So set your students up for success and program quality music. And if that means you have a less number of performances but higher quality, where the students walk away feeling like, man, I really accomplished something.

Adrian Gordan [00:23:56]:
I could see my growth. I felt like this was a great experience where I started from zero, and I’m now at 100, and I’m able to show that and share that with the community and emotionally affect people that I’m playing for. That’s the goal, as opposed to just stuffing our calendars with performances all season long that really don’t mean much and are not going to show growth in the students, because at the end of the day, if we’re not showing growth for the students, we’re not doing them justice.

Cyndi Burnett [00:24:31]:
In your opinion, how does music education promote childhood creativity?

Adrian Gordan [00:24:36]:
Well, I think music in general is just so universal, and I’ve talked about that in the past where I think no matter what continent you are, everyone understands music, and everyone can identify music. It may be a different style, maybe a different genre, different instrumentation, but we understand when we hear music, and I think that’s so important. So in that regard, the fact that it’s so universal, that’s important. And then I think naturally it just allows students to be free. I think you don’t have to ask permission to create something on your instrument or to sing something. Typically, kids just do it, whereas when you’re learning to read and write, there might be some stumbling blocks before you start to do a lot of that. But typically, even if a student doesn’t know anything about music, they’ll sit at a piano and start banging on some notes, just trying to create something and hear something that’s pleasing to them. So the accessibility of it, I think, is important.

Adrian Gordan [00:25:40]:
I think the universality of it is important. Yeah. And then I think it just involves so many different things. It involves the kinesthetic and the visual, the oral. There’s so many components that are happening at the same time, which why I think it’s so intriguing to a lot of young kids. It touches so many parts of their being. It makes perfect sense as to why it would be so inviting to a lot of kids.

Matthew Worwood [00:26:09]:
Well, Adrian, thank you so much to that. And I wish we had more time to talk about this idea of music being a bridge to the community, because I think there’s probably another opportunity to kind of talk more about that. But unfortunately, we do have to wrap it up, and we finish up all of our episodes by asking our guests to share three tips relevant to creativity that educators can kind of take away and begin to think about or implement immediately.

Adrian Gordan [00:26:32]:
Well, I think the first thing you’d want to do is share your personal creative endeavors. So I like to share my personal creative endeavors with compositional, my students. I think that’s important if you want to inspire that and others, talk about what you’ve done. And then I think asking questions is important. I think once you start asking questions, probing questions, you start that creative process, because now, without students even knowing it, they’re starting to think about solutions. They’re starting to think about problems and solutions. So, yeah, asking questions is a great part of that, too. And then I think the last part would be just the experiment.

Adrian Gordan [00:27:14]:
Don’t be afraid to dive in and get things wrong, because it’s not necessarily failure. It’s just being able to try again with more information.

Cyndi Burnett [00:27:25]:
Fantastic. Well, Adrian, thank you so much for joining us today. If you’re interested in Adrian’s work, check out his website, which we will post below. And check out his new book, note to Self, a music director’s guide for transitioning to a new school and building a thriving music program. If you enjoyed this episode today, we ask that you identify a colleague or friend who you think will enjoy it and send it to them via email or social media. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:27:52]:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Warwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:27:55]:
This episode was produced by creativity and education in partnership with warwoodclassroom.com. Our editor is Sina Yusefzade.