Bill Bauer leads workshops in Dalcroze Education for all ages, from preschoolers to seniors, and all levels of musical ability from novices to professional musicians. An experienced and compelling workshop leader, he is perhaps best known for making improvisation accessible to students, regardless of their training and background. Through Dalcroze Education, Bill awakens students’ body awareness through responsive listening and deepens their musical understanding through embodied learning. Guiding students in interactive, hands-on learning, he invites students to enter into a flow state that frees them to explore music in a deeply personal and profoundly intimate way.
Bill earned his Dalcroze License and Certificate at the Manhattan Dalcroze Institute in studies with Dalcroze Diplômées Robert Abramson and Ruth Alperson. He earned his Ph.D. and MA in Composition from the CUNY Graduate Center and Columbia University, respectively. His in-depth study of spontaneous expression in jazz, blues, and various popular idioms informs his Dalcroze teaching, giving his work a distinctly American character.
He has led Dalcroze classes and workshops at International Dalcroze Conferences in Quebec City, Canada; Vienna, Austria; Geneva, Switzerland; Tokyo, Japan; Coventry, England; and Pittsburgh, PA, as well as at the International Society for Improvised Music conference. He has taught classes at several Dalcroze Society of America national conferences and chapter workshops, as well as in Dalcroze Teacher Training Institutes at Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh) and The Longy School (Cambridge, MA). He has given workshops or classes for adults and/or children at The Dalcroze School of the Rockies, Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, and University of Georgia Community Music School. In Central New Jersey, he has also given classes and/or workshops for Princeton Boychoir and Princeton Girlchoir, The Westminster Conservatory at Rider University, the Trenton Community Music School, The Princeton Friends’ School. He has also taught at Music for People’s Adventures in Improvisation, Star Island’s Star Arts and LitFest conferences, and various private and community schools, church choirs, and hand bell and vocal ensembles. Bill’s internationally recognized research into Dalcroze theory and practice has appeared in the pages of The Journal of the Korean Dalcroze Society, Le Rythme (the publication of FIER), American Dalcroze Journal, and Dalcroze Connections.
Current Executive Director of the Dalcroze Society of America, Bill teaches music full-time in the Performing and Creative Arts Department at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, where he also serves as Coordinator of Musical Performance. The Director of CSI’s Interdisciplinary Degree Program in American Studies (AMS), he is also on the CUNY Graduate Center’s Ph.D. Program in Musicology and Certificate Program in Africana Studies faculties.
Bill’s internationally recognized research into jazz performance practice has advanced our understanding of vocal and instrumental improvisation in their historical and cultural contexts. Most recently he produced the Louis Armstrong online bibliography for Oxford University Press. He also contributed the chapter “Expressiveness in Jazz Performance: Prosody and Rhythm” to the book Expressiveness in music performance: Empirical approaches across styles and cultures, co-edited by Dorottya Fabian, Renee Timmers, and Emery Schubert and published by Oxford University Press in 2014. In 2002, University of Michigan Press published his book Open the Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter to critical acclaim; and his essays on jazz vocal performance practice have appeared in the following refereed journals: Jazz Perspectives, Current Musicology, and Annual Review of Jazz Studies. His research in Dalcroze Education includes historical studies of Hilda Schuster’s impact on the American community of practice, connections between Dalcroze Eurhythmics and Creative Motion, and the role of Jaques- Dalcroze’s exposure to North African expressive cultures in the development of his system of human development through musical engagement.
“Bill is a master teacher and jazz specialist whose ability to distill the essentials of the language of jazz into elements which could be absorbed by classical musicians is remarkable.”
Lisa Parker, Dalcroze Diplôme Supérieur
Former Director of Dalcroze Summer Institute,
Longy School of Music, Cambridge, MA.