Hudson Valley Homeschool Music

To provide music education to homeschool students through intergenerational experiences in the Hudson Valley of New York.  The purpose of this homeschool music program is to deliver an interactive, non-traditional, flexible, supportive, sociable, and extracurricular opportunity for homeschool students who strive for creativity.  We are inviting parents, at no extra program cost, to join their students in their journey to discover and perform music together.  Through this collaboration, parents and students will experience an outlet to express, animate, emerge, diversify, shape, and mainstream creativity through the intersection of music and life.  The focus of this program is to provide the resources to inspire and captivate active music learning with the intention to encourage lifelong community music making.

The intergenerational homeschool band program will be designed for homeschool students (age 9 and above) and parents with any to no level of music making experience of standard brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments.  We will help students and parents select or encourage an instrument they are passionate about learning.  If you already play an instrument, fantastic as we will help continue your journey by strengthening and challenging your musical skills through this program.  A major goal of this band program is for students and parents to become a whole musician by studying music theory, instrument care and maintenance, music history, and community music, through repertoire-based instruction and live ensemble performance.  Joshua E. Long, PhD, who lives both in Pennsylvania and New York, will be the main instructor for this program.

We are planning for a 2.5-hour, one day a week (most like Friday sometime between 10 am – 2 pm), nine-month (September through May) experience where students and parents attend two back to back sessions consisting of a group lesson followed by a large ensemble experience.  The group lessons will focus more on individualized instruction such as tone production, finger placement on the instrument, instrument care, and sheet music understanding.  The ensemble experience will pull all band members together to sharpen and challenge those skills through ensemble performance and instruction.  There will be two performances each academic year (December and May).  Rehearsals will not occur around holidays and a detailed schedule will be provided at the start of the program.  Rehearsal and performance location have not been determined yet but will be based in the Hudson Valley close to Poughkeepsie, NY.

Currently we are still in the planning phases and details will be available soon.  We strive for our program to be affordable, options to be payed monthly, will have prepayment and additional children discounts, and will be based off a full academic year (September through May) rate.  The cost will be based around each individual child’s participation as we encourage parents to participate at no additional cost to encourage music making.  However, please note that parents and students will need to provide their own instruments and music stands.  There will be instrument rental options available and testing for instruments owned that might have not been played in a while.  A meeting will be held early September for instrument selection, testing, and rental needs.

We want parents of homeschoolers to participate!  Even though not required, we encourage parents to perform instruments they currently play, dust off their instrument in the closet, or learn a new instrument with their homeschooler.  This intergenerational experience will provide so much for your child and you through opportunities to make music together during our program and beyond in the community.

As you can see we are still in our planning phases with a start of September 2024.  Currently, we are gathering information from homeschool students and parents to gauge the interest of developing an intergenerational homeschool band program in the Hudson Valley.  Please fill out the interest form below and please know that by filling out the form does not mean you are required to participate.  We will be in touch once we have finalized our plans.