Tom Schnauber
Assistant Professor of Performance Arts
I think students can really benefit from professors who have real world experience. We can offer insights and advice based on our own first-hand knowledge of the fields in which we ourselves are passionately immersed.
As a professional composer, my perspective on music is based not just on reading and writing about it, but also on actively engaging it from a creative perspective: listening to music critically, thinking about what makes any given piece tick, and even creating new works in class. My personal experiences as a writer and performer of music allow me to imagine what a person like Bach might have been thinking and feeling while composing; and being able to describe that to students adds a dimension to their educational experience they might not get somewhere else.
