Hybrid 2022 ASTA Conference Begins March 16 in Atlanta; March 23 Online

March 14, 2022, 1:02 PM · For me, and for hundreds of other music teachers and students across America, the American String Teachers Association conference in Orlando, Fla. was the last large in-person event we attended in 2020, before the world shut down. It thus became a pandemic milestone - would it happen this year?

Image courtesy ASTA.

In 2021, the answer was "yes," but it was held completely online. It was a successful virtual event, where the string community came together to share just what we’d all learned in a year of primarily online learning.

This year, ASTA will offer both an in-person and online event - click here for all the registration information.

The in-person event will take place in Atlanta, Georgia from March 16-19 and will feature all the elements of the in-person conference that members have been craving over the last two years: live performances, deep dive workshops, educational sessions, masterclasses, and opportunities for in-person networking.

The virtual event will take place March 23-26 on ASTA’s online platform and will incorporate many of the elements that teachers have come to love about online learning. With both pre-recorded and live online events, the sessions are designed for an online audience, rather than simply being recordings of the in-person event. The content will stay up on the virtual platform for 30 days, so teachers can attend all the sessions they want without having to miss their own classes and lessons. And, of course, by being online, teachers can attend the conference for a significantly lower rate than the in-person conference, from the comfort (and economy!) of their own homes.

Both events are unified by the theme, “Celebrating Diversity,” and the educational session topics for both include approaches for improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in arts organizations and schools, deep dives into the backgrounds of historically excluded composers, and explorations into repertoire by diverse composers to update the pedagogical and performance repertoire for every instrument.

One such online session is being offered by me - “Creating A Diverse Repertoire Sequence For Elementary Violinists,” which highlights several pieces that I love to add to my sequence of Suzuki repertoire in Books 1 and 2.

Registration is still open for both the in-person and online ASTA conferences, so interested string teachers can still sign up! Click here for more information.

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