Performances + Events
New England Conservatory’s Institute for Teaching Artistry will host two Scholars-in-Residence during the 2026–2027 academic year. These field experts will be embedded in the NEC community, where they’ll share their work with students in the Conservatory’s College and Expanded Education divisions. The Scholars-in-Residence will also design and lead integrated fellowships that offer deeper insight into their respective areas of focus.
In the Fall 2026 semester, NEC alumna Stephanie Muñoz ’15 MM, ’17 GD, a music educator at the Margarita Muñiz Academy in Jamaica Plain, will highlight her public-school work through individual advising sessions, class visits, and a presentation in the Teaching Artistry@NEC Workshop Series.
During the Spring 2027 semester, violinist, speaker, and author Vijay Gupta will share his work as the founder and artistic director of Street Symphony — a nonprofit that brings music to shelters, mental health clinics, state hospitals, county jails, and re-entry programs across Los Angeles — through advising sessions, class visits, master classes, and a talk about his memoir, Restrung.
“We are thrilled to welcome these two passionate and innovative teaching artists to NEC and know that their expertise, mentorship, real-world accomplishments, and dedication to advancing the field of teaching artistry will enrich the entire NEC community,” said Tanya Maggi, dean and chair of the Conservatory’s Community Engagement and Professional Studies Department.
“I want students to experience music as a space where their identities, cultures, and individual voices are valued and celebrated,” Muñoz said. “Through creative and culturally responsive approaches to music-making, I hope to encourage students to think beyond traditional definitions of musicianship and see themselves as active creators, collaborators, and storytellers. I want them to develop the confidence to take risks, explore unfamiliar musical ideas, and recognize the knowledge they already bring from their families and communities. Ultimately, I hope students leave with a deeper understanding that while technique and tradition are a part of music, so are curiosity and creativity.”
“One of the things I hope to contribute to NEC’s teaching artistry program is a deeper consideration of what happens when musicians return to the same community over time,” Gupta said. “Community-engaged work asks us to move beyond simply preparing a performance and delivering it unchanged from one place to another. It asks us to pay attention — to the particular people in the room, to what they know and create, and to how relationship itself can change our artistic practice.”
In the fellowship component of the residencies, Muñoz and Gupta will each offer a small cohort of NEC students the opportunity to more deeply explore the immeasurable impact teaching artistry and community engagement can have wherever they’re expertly practiced.
Muñoz’s fellowship, Steel Pan Teaching and Classroom Culture, will focus on teaching music in bilingual, urban settings and working with students who don’t read music. Muñoz, who founded and directs a steel pan and Latin percussion ensemble at the Muñiz Academy, will also teach fellows to play the instrument, and will lead a steel pan performance in January.
“Teaching fellows will have opportunities to observe and practice student-centered, culturally responsive teaching strategies while developing their own approaches to classroom management, rehearsal, and music-making,” Muñoz said. “I hope they will see teaching as more than delivering content, but as building relationships, fostering curiosity, and creating meaningful connections between students and music. Ultimately, I want teaching fellows to leave with greater confidence in their identities as educators and a broader understanding of the many ways music can be taught, experienced, and shared.”
Gupta’s fellowship, Building Community through Music at Common Art, will explore the best practices for community engagement and teaching artistry in populations experiencing homelessness, incarceration, addiction, and recovery. Under Gupta’s mentorship, and in a performance at Common Cathedral’s Common Art program — which “offers space, art materials, and supportive relationships to encourage individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty to learn, engage, and connect in community” — students will gain insight into building meaningful, sustainable community relationships through music.
“I want students to have the experience of becoming more attentive musicians — able to listen, adapt, question their assumptions, and understand that they may be changed by an encounter as much as anyone else,” Gupta said. “The goal is not to manufacture transformation or prove that music has ‘solved’ something, but to develop a more honest, specific, and reciprocal approach to community-engaged performance.”
NEC’s inaugural Scholar-in-Residence, Conservatory alumna Dr. Molly Gebrian ’06 MM, ’08 GD, explored the intersection of neuroscience and musical practice over the course of two years. She is now a member of NEC’s faculty. The Institute for Teaching Artistry’s 2026–2027 Scholar-in-Residence program has been strategically designed to offer students access to multiple field experts working in different areas over the course of a single academic year.
