Educational Offerings

Arco Belo is dedicated to working with emerging composers, performers, and audiences. They have given concerts and workshops for undergraduate and graduate students at institutions including Georgetown University, the Boulanger Initiative’s inaugural board retreat, the Composers Online Institute, and elementary, middle and high school programs across the country.

The following classes and workshops are offered as stand-alone events or in combination with public performances:

  • Hands-on workshops, coachings and masterclasses for composer-performers of varying levels on contemporary repertoire and techniques with an emphasis on genre-fluid improvisation, dramaturgical approaches to more open improvisations, and crafting solo cadenzas  * ( see below for details)
  • Readings, workshops, and recordings of student composer works at the undergraduate and graduate levels
  • Graphic score notation workshops * (see below for details)
  • Pre-concert talks / Post-concert talkbacks
  • Seminars on entrepreneurship and professional development
  • Hands-on workshops focusing on the collaborative/creative process, including samples from notation explanations, and staging demonstrations
  • Demonstration of active listening techniques, with live interpretation of graphic and/or text scores and discussion of music as a medium for communication
  • Public or private chamber music coachings or masterclasses

Public or private individual instrument lessons and studio masterclasses in violin, viola, cello, accordion, piano, bass, drum set & percussion

SAMPLE WORKSHOP OFFERINGS

COMPOSER READINGS

The ensemble offers reading sessions and feedback meetings with student composers, discussing a wide variety of topics ranging from notation, fluid compositional forms, and textural/instrumental possibilities to multimedia integration. 

GENREFLUID IMPROVISATION WORKSHOP

A holistic and multi-pronged approach to improvisation targeted specifically for classical or jazz performers at high school and undergraduate levels:

-developing your own cadenzas

-investigating dramaturgical approaches to free improvisation

-theatrical and performance art aspects of free improvisation

-growing and strengthening our relationship with groove/time through  groove meditation exercises and polyrhythmic exercises 

-soloing over complex subdivisions/odd meters while maintaining melodic construction and space

GRAPHIC SCORE NOTATION WORKSHOP

How to unlock / demystify the role of the composer? Graphic notation can empower everyone to connect to their inner creativity.

Participants are handed paper and coloring materials and guided to represent an improvised sound/gesture in two dimensional form. The ensemble then workshops and performs the scores. Participants are invited to the performance, where the ensemble will perform one of the pieces from the workshop live in the concert. 

Note: This workshop has been offered to a wide variety of age groups and is highly customizable