- Featured Artist -
Dr. Baruch J. Whitehead
Orchestrating the Future of Music Education, One Note and Spiritual at a Time
Dr. Baruch J. Whitehead
is an associate professor of music education at Ithaca College and the founding director of the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers, which is dedicated to the preservation of the Negro spiritual. He also founded the Orff-Schulwerk certification program, a music education program that views music as a basic system similar to language, at Ithaca College and Marshall University. He is the director of the annual Orff Certification Training Course at Boston University.
"Fostering Melodic Excellence at Ithaca College"
— Redefining Music as Language
-Dr. Baruch J. Whitehead -
Areas of expertise include
diversity in music education, gospel music and its preservation within mainstream musical settings music of the African diaspora
music of civil rights movement
music of civil rights movement
The Educator
The author of several academic papers, Dr. Whitehead is the author of the chapter on music of the civil rights movement in Music and Conflict Transformation: Harmonies and Dissonances in Geopolitics (2008).
The Innovator
As the founding director of the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers since 2010, Dr. Whitehead seeks to preserve the formal, concert-style Negro spiritual, which he believes carries the power to promote social justice and racial healing.
The Preservationist
As a peace activist, Dr. Whitehead presented a peace concert with the famous Israeli composer and performer Yair Dalal with a group of young people from the Muslim and Jewish communities.
- Keeping the Spiritual Alive: -
The Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers
The chorus performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on Mother's Day in 2017. Dr. Whitehead made his conducting debut at Carnegie Hall with the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers and the 'Fisk Jubilee Singers in March 2022. He has directed the "Unshackled" Gospel Choir in Syracuse, the SUNY Cortland Gospel Choir, and the "Voices" Multicultural Chorus, among others. He has served as a clinician, conductor, and adjudicator in West Virginia, Florida, Texas, Ohio, Brussels, Belgium, Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Central New York, and he has taught marching band and concert band for 15 years.
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