Do you want to grow your musical skills, deepen your knowledge of the recorder, and enrich your recorder community? Have you always wanted to take recorder lessons but live far from flesh-and-blood recorder teachers? The Traveling Teacher Program helps recorder communities without a local recorder teacher to access top-notch instruction on an ongoing basis.
Recorder and viola da gamba player Suzanne Ferguson has participated in a similar program sponsored by the Viola da Gamba Society of America.
Why is this better than a workshop? Suzanne asks, then answers, her own question: Because of the continuity among the sessions and the commitment of both students and teachers to the project of really improving playing at a local level.
The Traveling Teacher Program subsidizes the travel of professional teachers to participating communities. Up to $400 in travel reimbursement is available per teacher visit to applicants who guarantee teachers at least 10 hours of teaching per visit, at $50 per hour, a rate below the national average. These 10 hours of teaching could be distributed between private lessons, coaching, master classes, group playing sessions, etc. Local applicant groups must also provide housing, food, and local transportation for the teacher, and must include three or more American Recorder Society members.
In future, the ARS will subsidize one year commitments consisting of three to four visits to take place over the course of one fiscal year by the same teacher to the same community. This year's half-year pilot program will consist of two visits scheduled to take place between March 2016 and August 2016.
The application deadline for this year's program is January 1, 2016.
Click here for a full description of the program, including an application form, on the ARS website.