The Pathways Initiative

about the workshop

Pathways participants are talented young performers who may not yet identify as composers, but are passionately curious about creating their own music. Our past Pathways instruction team includes Dr. Allison Ogden, composer/performers Jecorey Arthur and Rachel Grimes, members of Longleash, and Loretto Project composer fellows.

Pathways participants practice basic tools, techniques and approaches that will help them articulate their own musical ideas and enable them to pursue further explorations in composition. Topics covered include improvisation, theory and form, style, and extended techniques.

Over the course of two weekends, students participate in group workshops, receive individual instruction, and share a completed miniature composition for their own instrument by the final session of the workshop.

why pathways?

The Loretto Project, an annual summer composition workshop now in its fifth season, brings four accomplished graduate-level composers and one celebrated resident composer to Kentucky for seminars, workshops, and public performances in Louisville and Loretto. In 2018, we were thrilled to pilot a new component of the Project: our Pathways Initiative, an introductory composition workshop for high school instrumentalists from backgrounds underrepresented in the field of composition.

As new music specialists, we are fortunate to practice a living art that offers many opportunities to address social inequities prevalent in the field of cultural production. Our Pathways Initiative, an introductory composition workshop, aims to empower students from backgrounds underrepresented in our field by encouraging them to actively identify as composers and creators of music. Pathways provides students with a craft-based approach that offers them the basic tools they need to articulate and amplify their unique musical perspective, with an emphasis on diverse aesthetics, styles, and forms.