The Future of Music Leadership
The Future of Music Leadership guest speaker series offers students’ real-world, experiential learning opportunities to discuss career avenues with industry leaders, and to develop their own artistic voice and social activism. This series is generously co-sponsored by the Wake Forest University Program for Leadership and Character.
Upcoming Series
Spring 2025
Dr. Hilary Apfelstadt is Professor Emerita of Choral Studies at the University of Toronto where she held the Elmer Iseler Chair in Conducting. From 2013–2018, she was artistic director of Exultate Chamber Singers, a semi-professional ensemble in Toronto. She served as Interim Executive Director of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) from 2020–2021.
A native Canadian, she has led her university choirs in performances at ACDA conferences and at Podium, the national conference of Choral Canada. She has guest conducted honors choruses and festivals throughout North America and internationally, including forty all-state choirs and the 2014 National Youth Choir of Canada. Her teaching experiences range from public school to community ensembles and church choirs. She holds leadership awards from Choirs Ontario, NC-ACDA, Ohio Choral Directors Association, and both Central and Midwestern ACDA Regions.
A prolific author, Hilary Apfelstadt has published widely. Her book on the life and work of Canadian composer Ruth Watson Henderson, I Didn’t Want It To be Boring (Toronto: Prism Publishers) won Choral Canada’s award for Outstanding Choral Publication in 2018. She is editor of a book on women choral composers to be published by GIA in 2025. She serves on the editorial board of Anacrusis for Choral Canada.
Photo by Simon Yao, courtesy of Dr. Hilary Apfelstadt
The Future of Music Leadership workshops: WFU Choirs with Dr. Christopher Gilliam
Past Series
Fall 2024
Lainey Raab is a board-certified music therapist providing music therapy services at Brenner Children’s Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC. Her areas of expertise are with the pediatric trauma unit care, neonatal-opioid withdrawal, and neurologic music therapy. Lainey is a native of Dallas, Texas and received a Bachelor of Science in Music Therapy from Texas Woman’s University as well as completed her internship at the Children’s Hospital of Dallas where she found her passion working with kids. She has had the opportunity to work with children and adults with cognitive disabilities in a performing arts space as well as adolescents in the school district focusing on vocational training, behavioral health, and executive functioning. Pioneering the music therapy program through Sophie’s Place at Atrium Health Levine Children’s Brenner Children’s Hospital, she has enjoyed advocating for music therapy needs, supporting patients, families, and staff, and collaborating with other disciplines to expand services and research progress as the program evolves.
Photo courtesy of Lainey Raab
The Future of Music Leadership class: Gender, Sexuality, and Music with Dr. Megan Francisco
Spring 2024
Shana Tucker’s unique genre of ChamberSoul™ weaves together jazz, roots folk, acoustic pop, and a touch of R&B, into melodies that echo in your head for days.
Shana’s ChamberSoul is equal parts dynamic storytelling paired with rich, deep music that sits down next to you and puts its arm around your shoulders. “I’m intrinsically drawn to acoustic instruments because of their resonance, warmth, and intimacy,” she says. “ChamberSoul is all about the conversations music ignites…it brings musicians and audiences closer, and makes the music tangible, no matter how large or small the room is.”
A sought-after collaborator, Shana has performed and recorded with legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Bennie Maupin, jazz flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell, and Grammy-nominated artists The Foreign Exchange (NuSoul/R&B), Nnenna Freelon (jazz) and Pierce Freelon (children’s).
Shana is a recipient of several grant awards for artistry and arts administration leadership. She has served on several nonprofit arts organizations’ board of directors or advisory boards, including Blair Publisher, Washington Women in Jazz, and North Carolina Presenters Consortium.
A front-line advocate for arts education, Shana believes that approaching academics from an artistic perspective encourages innovation, critical thinking, and self-confidence.
Visit Shana Tucker to discover more of her current and upcoming projects and collaborations.
Photo courtesy of Shana Tucker
The Future of Music Leadership class: Improvisation with Dr. Jacqui Carrasco
Dr. Matthew Hinsley received the 2020 Margaret Perry Award for Excellence in Education, was a 2019 recipient of the National Guild for Community Arts Education Milestone Award for more than twenty years of community service in the arts. He was named Public Citizen of the Year in 2017 by the Texas Statewide Division of the National Association of Social Workers, and was a winner of a 2015 Austin Under 40 award. Hinsley has worked as a community arts organizer in Central Texas since 1996.
As Executive Director of Austin Classical Guitar (ACG), Dr. Hinsley has raised more than ten million dollars in support of broad concert, community engagement, and educational programming, building the nation’s largest classical guitar nonprofit organization. In 2015 he joined the faculty at the University of Texas College of Fine Arts to teach courses in arts entrepreneurship and business management in the arts. In 2021 Hinsley opened ACG’s first concert and creative learning center in central Austin, called The Rosette.
Dr. Hinsley is founder and a lead author of the ACG curriculum and music library that, paired with extensive direct service, has transformed classroom guitar education in public schools across the United States reaching tens of thousands of students. The curriculum, which is now used internationally, is in service in over fifty Austin-area schools including for-credit programs at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, multiple Juvenile Justice centers, forty-five Texas districts, and forty U.S. states. Dr. Hinsley was trained as a classical guitarist and vocalist at the Interlochen Arts Academy, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the University of Texas at Austin.
He has written seven books including Form & Essence: A Guide to Practicing Truth, Classical Guitar for Young People, Creativity to Community: Arts Nonprofit
Success One Coffee at a Time, and the film-optioned fantasy series Tinder & Flint.
Photo by Jack Kloecker, courtesy of Matthew Hinsley
The Future of Music Leadership class: Social Impact in Entrepreneurship with Dr. Fatima Hamdulay
Student Spotlight: Micaela Creo
As a rising junior at Wake Forest University I attended an inspiring talk called Art, Money, and Community Service by ACG Executive Director Dr. Matthew Hinsley. Ecstatic about each story I heard, I became an ACG intern in hopes of playing a part in building community with music.
Micaela Creo
Click or tap above to read more about Micaela’s internship with Austin Classical Guitar.
Questions?
Select concerts and lectures that are led by our guest speakers are open to the public. This will be noted for each event, along with information on date, time, and location.
Events for The Future of Music Leadership are free!
Upcoming events for The Future of Music Leadership will be added to the Department of Music season calendar.
Follow the Wake Forest University Department of Music on Instagram, Facebook, and X to hear more about these upcoming concerts and lectures!
