Spring 2026 Course Search

Historical Dress: The Park-McCullough Project Spring ‘26

We will study and perform from the string band traditions of rural America. Nova Scotia, Quebecois, Irish, New England, Scandinavian, African-American dance and ballad traditions. In addition, these will be experienced with listening, practice (weekly group rehearsals outside of class), and performing components. Emphasis on ensemble intuition, playing by ear, and lifetime personal music making skills (transposition, harmonizing, etc.).

Beginning, intermediate and advanced group lessons on the mandolin will be offered. Students will learn classical technique on the mandolin and start to develop a repertoire of classical and traditional folk pieces. Simple song sheets with chords, tablature, and standard notation, chord theory, and scale work will all be used to further skills. History of the Italian origins of mandolin and its introduction to the western world will be discussed as well as past and present practices.

For the experienced (3+years of playing) violinist/violist. Lessons in traditional styles of fiddling – Quebecois, New England, Southern Appalachian, Scandinavian, Cajun, Irish, and Scottish. This course is designed to heighten awareness of the variety of ways the violin is played regionally and socially in North America (and indeed around the world) and to give practical music skills for furthering personal music making. Students will be expected to perform at Music Workshop, or as part of a concert, in ensemble and/or solo.

A comprehensive course in learning musical skills on the ukulele. We will learn the history of the uke, from its Portuguese and Indigenous Hawaiian origins, and both traditional and contemporary styles. Music theory and playing techniques will be learned and practiced. Awareness of traditional styles of playing the instrument will be furthered through a listening component and ensemble playing with other instrumentalists. Repertoire will be drawn from traditional and original Hawaiian songs, as well as contemporary music from the past 60 years.

Celtic history and music from Ireland, Scotland, Bretagne, Galatia, and Cape Breton will be experienced, studied, and performed using instruments and voices. We’ll find and cross the musical bridges between regions–from the ballads of Ireland, Scotland and Wales to the Alalas of Spain, through the Scottish Gaelic speaking Highland and Islands to the dance tunes of Brittany. An end-of-term presentation will be prepared drawing on inspiration from traditional forms.

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American icon whose approach and innovation on the trumpet set him apart from the mainstream. Davis explored new approaches to creating and composing music. Davis was a trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. When you hear a Miles Davis recording, you know it's Miles. Davis's five-decade career kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz.

Delights of Ephemera explores the significance of mass-produced materials in the context of art movements and exhibitions. Contrary to its definition, ephemera can have power and permanence, giving agency to marginal and marginalized groups and providing a record of actions outside institutional structures. A poster for an exhibition can be as important—or, in terms of its historical presence, more important—as the exhibition itself.

In this course, we will explore various projects that aim to connect people with their surroundings and communities.
We will also explore the strategies that various artists have implemented to increase their audiences and interest in the arts.
We will analyze and design projects that seek sustainability, diversification, and access to the experience of art and culture.

By evaluating environments we could design artistic projects that promote art, artistic education, and the promotion of cultural products as actions to build community, identity, and a creative economy.

In this course we focus our attention on a few of the most exciting composers of the late twentieth-century, and discuss how their music has influenced the music of the current period.

Balkan music is fierce brass, complex harmonies, and mind-bending asymmetrical dances. It is spirited Macedonian wedding music, dissonant village songs, devastating Bosnian love ballads, Greek polyphonic songs, and heart-pounding Turkish rhythms. In the Bennington Balkan Ensemble, we will learn to perform a variety of traditional, urban, village, and popular music from Southeast Europe. Singing and playing indigenous, orchestral, and electronic instruments, we’ll explore repertoire from Albania, Greece, Bosnia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosova, Turkey, Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia.

Historical Dress: The Park-McCullough Project Spring '26

Working in collaboration with the local Park-McCullough Historic Governor’s Mansion, students will create a new archive of the historic dress collection.

This seminar course investigates the cultural, philosophical, and aesthetic dimensions of sound through critical readings, listening exercises, and discussions. Drawing from fields such as sound studies, media theory, musicology, literature, and art, Readings in Sound challenges students to consider how sound shapes experience, knowledge, identity, and space.

In this course we will be taking a hands on approach to understanding the lever harp both historically and compositionally. We will be building and stringing small 19 string harps which will be used as the basis for our compositional work where students will be creating new works of varying length for the lever harp to be presented at the end of the semester. We’ll look at what techniques are and are not achievable, what makes this instrument unique to other harps, and how to include it in larger compositional contexts.