Kevin Cummines, adjunct lecturer for fine arts, and performing-arts coordinator for the Office of Student Activities, premiered his composition Symphony no. 1: The Peacock as part of the Hudson Symphony Orchestra’s first concert as Symphony-in-Residence at Saint Peter’s College. The concert took place on October 25 in The Roy Irving Theatre, of which Cummines is artistic director. The Hudson Symphony Orchestra is under the direction of Dr. YiLi Lin, director of the Hoboken School of Music and founder of the Hudson Symphony Orchestra.
The Hudson Symphony Orchestra became the Symphony-in-Residence at Saint Peter’s College October 7, when President Dr. Eugene J. Cornacchia and Dr. YiLi Lin, the symphony’s conductor, signed a formal agreement. The partnership between Saint Peter’s and The Hudson Symphony provides concert and performance opportunities for the College community, as well as the community at large. It also creates a center for cultural programming, information and activities.
Cummines also presented the paper: “A Poor Professor at an Urban College Teaching Music to Struggling Urban Students: Hip Hop and the College Music Curriculum” at the Fifty-First National Conference of the College Music Society, in Atlanta, Ga., September 25. A half-hour Q&A session followed.
Through his paper, Cummines argued a constructivist approach to music education in higher learning, as a means to bolster student involvement in traditional academic music practices, as well as to codify the mass of anthropological and musicological research in hip hop that has emerged over the last decade.
The design of the conference was purposeful in its call to challenge the members of the College Music Society to imagine the future. Cummines’ presentation was part of the “New Curriculums” session.