New Orleans music students attending the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music (EMCM) are required to learn coding as part of their curriculum, as part of a collaboration with Apple.
Another mandatory course at the music school – no matter which primary instrument students have chosen to learn – is piano …
The school itself chose to make piano lessons compulsory.
“At the heart of the center’s curriculum is our founder’s belief that truly understanding music begins with learning to hear it,” explains executive director Lisa Dabney. “Piano plays a key role in this process by helping students develop critical listening skills, connect deeply with music, and build a strong foundation in music theory. For this reason, piano has been a required class for all students, in addition to their primary instrument.”
The coding component stems (sorry!) from Apple’s support.
The fledgling musicians begin cycling through their four classes for the day: piano, homework help, an instrument of their choosing, and coding — a required course that stems from the center’s ongoing partnership with Apple.
Launched in 2019, the collaboration with Apple has allowed EMCM to expand its curriculum, adding a suite of tech-focused courses that complement the world-class music education the center provides to students.
“I know some people wonder, ‘Why is a music institution teaching coding?’ For us, it’s all connected — it’s part of a digital tapestry,” says Lisa Dabney, the center’s executive director. “It’s about closing the digital divide by giving students access to technology and introducing them to different types of diverse, long-term career opportunities, including pathways in music technology and beyond. In a community where many homes lack access to iPads and computers, this partnership with Apple helps us put the power of technology directly in our students’ hands, opening doors to creative and professional futures they might have never imagined.”
Apple provides hardware and software to enable students to learn to engineer their own tracks.
In the center’s Mac lab, students use the latest hardware and software to learn coding basics with Apple’s Everyone Can Code and Swift Playgrounds frameworks. And in the on-site music studio, they learn how to engineer their own tracks with apps like GarageBand and Logic Pro. Students also get access to their own iPad every semester, allowing them to take what they’ve learned in their classes and build on those skills at home.
It’s hoped that being educated in everything from music theory to sound engineering will give students the widest range of career paths when they leave the school.
Apple also highlighted an arts project in the city, intended to provide opportunities for a wide range of students, including some who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law. The hope is that they can be diverted from a life of crime before it becomes the only path they see.
The Young Artist Movement (YAM), Arts New Orleans’ arts education and workforce development program, which works primarily with students ages 14 to 22. Through YAM, founded in 2016, local youth learn the mural-making process from guest artists and are then given the opportunity to create their own across the city […]
For some of the young artists, the project holds an added layer of meaning — they came to YAM through its arts diversion program, an alternative to prosecution and incarceration for youth facing low-level, nonviolent offenses […]
The idea for YAM and its arts diversion program was sparked by now-retired Judge Arthur Hunter and Xavier University professor Ron Bechet, who is also an artist. Through his career as a police officer, a lawyer, and finally as a judge in his native New Orleans, Hunter had a firsthand look at the factors that lead to young people getting swept into the city’s criminal justice system and saw the potential for art to provide an alternate path.
“It’s not just the art — it’s an economic opportunity as well, where they should be able to make a living using their talent,” explains Hunter, a board member at Arts New Orleans. “That’s just as much a part of it as seeing that beautiful picture on a canvas.”
Check out the full details here.
Photo: Apple
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