Richard Will

I have been playing, singing, and writing music since I was a kid, and I started teaching and writing about it when I was in grad school. I have always tried to understand how music does the things it does, like sway our moods, entertain us, educate us, connect us with others, or animate the places where we live and work. In a song or a video, words and pictures may identify a story or feeling that we respond to. But musical sound alone impacts us deeply, bypassing language to reach our hearts and minds and bodies directly. We can learn a lot about ourselves, and the communities around us, when we stop to listen. My classes aim to help students do so, whatever their musical tastes or experience may be.