Date of Defense

4-5-2014

Date of Graduation

5-2015

Department

Music

First Advisor

Gregory Jasperse

Second Advisor

Rhea Olivacce

Third Advisor

Kimberly Dunn-Adams

Abstract

I am a Choral Music Education major with a minor in Nonprofit leadership. My plan as a future educator is to start a nonprofit vocal jazz ensemble. For my senior honors thesis I created a vocal jazz ensemble and treated it as if it were my future organization. I started in August, planning out all of the logistics. I registered my ensemble as a class so I could reserve Rehearsal C every Monday and Wednesday for the semester. In October I was able to book the date of the recital.

Once all of the dates and times were confirmed, I began contacting local high school music teachers to find students that were interested. I went in to a few schools to talk different choirs about my thesis throughout November and held auditions in December. I still needed a few extra singers, so I looked to some underclassmen in the School of Music who wanted vocal jazz experience. I rehearsed the ensemble twice a week starting in January. The ensemble learned about the varying styles included in the challenging genre of vocal jazz, how to improvise, how to set up a sound system, and much more.

To make this experience more like a nonprofit organization, I applied for and received the Honors Thesis Research Scholarship through the Carl and Winifred Lee Honors College. For this scholarship, I created a budget that I would need to complete my project. Costs include renting the recital space, copies of music, binders, posters, and most importantly, the incredible musicians. I am treating the musicians for this project as if they were to play for me while I was running a nonprofit. Joe, Jacob, and Geoff were at every rehearsal, and remainder of the band came to select rehearsals.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Restricted

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