BANDQUEST

BandQuest® is a breakthrough music education project that brings new levels of creativity to a broad cross-section of American youth. It is designed to meet a need long articulated by music teachers for fresh, high quality, contemporary music for junior high bands.

The project will publish works commissioned from some of the most accomplished and imaginative composers of our time. The roster includes Michael Colgrass, Brent Michael Davids, Michael Daugherty, Thomas Duffy, Adolphus Hailstork, Libby Larsen, Tania Leon, Stephen Paulus, Robert Rodriguez, Alvin Singleton, Chen Yi, and Judith Lang Zaimont. Each composer collaborates with a school band to ensure that the work is age appropriate, and, in some cases, to develop new ways of teaching creative processes.

BandQuest, however, goes beyond new music. Each piece is accompanied by an innovative, interdisciplinary CD-ROM curriculum. It facilitates the learning process and enhances their understanding of the music, its basic elements, its context and how it relates to other aspects of life and learning. Informed by the National Standards for Arts Education, it provides the teacher with an additional learning tool that can be used outside the band room.

The Forum serves as publisher for BandQuest, with worldwide distribution through Hal Leonard. Sales from the publications will ultimately help fund the commissioning of additional pieces. BandQuest is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Pew Charitable Trusts,The John and James L. Knight Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the George Frederick Jewett Foundation and Oswald Family Foundation.

National Advisory Panel: Frank Battisti, New England Conservatory; Craig Kirchhoff, University of Minnesota; Thomas C. Duffy, Yale University; Curriculum Editor Michael Hiatt, Minnesota Center for Arts Education; Elizabeth H. Jackson, Eden Prairie High School; Laura Sindberg, Waukesha, Wisc.; P. Brett Smith, Mahtomedi, Minn.; John Paulson, Coda Music Technology.

For more on BandQuest, visit www.BandQuest.org.

For more information on BandQuest, contact
Patricia Shifferd at pshifferd@composersforum.org or (651) 251-2818.
Krystal Banfield at kbanfield@composersforum.org or (651) 251-2812
Carey Nadeau at cnadeau@composersforum.org or (651) 251-2814.