Over at the Arizona State University School of Music students are coming together on Tuesdays for Toons at Noon, an event where students can eat, hang out, and play music together. It takes place in the School of Music interior courtyard from 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is welcome to students of all majors. Samuel Peña, the community engagement coordinator at the ASU School of Music and Richard Brennan, a music education major, talk about the importance of students bonding over music and leaving the pressure of school in the classroom.
Music: "Carnivale Intrigue" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
Transcript:
Samuel Peña: Tunes at Noon Started through conversations that I was having with the students here in the School of Music. I started hearing the same thing. That thing was that, they loved going to school here, they loved what they were doing in their studio, but they didn't know anybody outside of their studio. So they're spending 4, 5, 6 hours practicing their instrument with their peers of the same instrument, in the same musical genre, and the track that they were in. In their area of study and they weren't getting to know the other people. Jazz students didn't know the classical students, the classical students didn't know the musical ed students, the musical ed students didn´t know the music therapy students. So while they do have recitals, and while they meet friends and invite them, there wasn't a lot of other places where they could meet and I thought. What would it look like to have an informal space where they were able to come in and be themselves, and build relationships through music.
Richard Brennan: It's always interesting to see what other people in the school music are doing. I feel that a lot of the, clicks I would say just sort of groups of majors like musical theater majors, jazz majors performance majors, all sort of stay in their own circles. What Samuel is putting out here is an opportunity for them to see what everyone else is doing.
Samuel Peña: There's a lot of pressure and to play things perfectly or to do your craft perfectly or to write the perfect essay or there's a lot of pressure to to excel and to get to that A+, to get that 100, to get a standing ovation there's a lot of pressure. I even say it goes into the likes of social media. There's a lot of pressure for approval and that can cause people, can wear people down. And tunes at noon I'm constantly throwing curveballs in the mix. Inviting people to do things. Improv if that's not their main thing. And I think there's like a relief that I've seen from our students to be able to just have a space where they can mess up, and/or they can take a risk and it doesn't mess up and they wouldn't have taken that risk had they not had that safe place to do it.
Richard Brennan: So I go here and I'm in class from 9:00am to 9:00pm. Sometimes I go throughout my day just not knowing what anyone else is doing because I'm so stuck in my course track, and then every Tuesday I just have the opportunity to hear a lot of really interesting music that I wouldn't have heard otherwise.
Reach the reporter at zvanarsd@asu.edu or follow @ZachVanArs on Twitter.
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
Zach Van Arsdale was the head of the multimedia department from August 2020 to May 2022, shaping design and multimedia storytelling at The State Press in addition to designing article experiences, illustrations and taking photographs. He has previously worked for The Howard Center of Investigative Journalism and on the Carnegie-Knight News21 project: "Unmasking America."
