Welcome to the APMExMEMECO Italy 2026 Conference! Here you can register and update your Sched profile. A draft schedule will be available May 15th, when you’ll be able to explore sessions and build your agenda.
What happens when songwriters are asked to work within limits? Rather than restricting expression, creative constraints can act as catalysts for discovery. In professional songwriting settings from co-writing sessions to industry briefs, songwriters frequently work under specific parameters of style, theme, and form. Bringing those constraints into the classroom not only mirrors real-world practices but also offers powerful tools for cultivating creativity and confidence.
This session introduces the pedagogical framework of constraint-based songwriting as a means to jump-start creativity, eliminate writer’s block, and encourage craft development. Drawing from both artistic practice and classroom application, this session will feature adaptable exercises that employ lyrical, formal, harmonic, and production-based limitations.
Participants will experience how limitations can lead to freedom by redirecting focus toward process, exploration, and intention. The session positions constraint not as a barrier but as an essential structure that deepens expressive range. Attendees will leave with hands-on strategies, adaptable prompts, and a renewed understanding of how teaching “within the box” can open creative doors for both students and professionals alike.
Professor/CEO, Berklee College of Music/Songwriting for Music Educators
Kat Reinhert is a genre-defying songwriter, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and bandleader. She has released five independently produced albums and collaborated with artists like Anat Fort, Jo Lawry, Ross Pederson, Michael Leonhart, Josh Logan, Stephen Lit, and David Cook. Her songwriting... Read More →
Thursday July 16, 2026 10:00am - 10:25am CEST Liceo Ovidio - Room 3PIAZZA XX SETTEMBRE 13, 67039 SULMONA (AQ)
In this session, preliminary findings will be presented on what music means to children from disadvantaged families. Thus, a critical discussion of the influences on children's music culture will be presented, and the importance of hearing their voices in shaping future music education will be emphasized.
Sehnaz Sünnetcioglu, PhDDr. Sehnaz Sünnetcioglu is an associate professor in the Department of Primary Education at the Faculty of Education, Bursa Uludağ University. She completed her doctoral degree in the 2009-2016 Integrated Arts Education Program. Her research interests include... Read More →
Thursday July 16, 2026 10:00am - 10:25am CEST Liceo Ovidio - Room 4PIAZZA XX SETTEMBRE 13, 67039 SULMONA (AQ)
This paper reconceptualizes music education through the concept of musickability, understood as the human capacity to build meaningful relationships with music across the lifespan. It argues for re-centering guided listening as an active, transformative, and relational practice that supports emotional, social, and educational development, especially in preadolescence.
Professor of Music Pedagogy, Conservatorio di Musica "Luisa D'Annunzio" - Pescara
Valentina Chiola is a lecturer in Music Pedagogy at the “Luisa D’Annunzio” Conservatory of Music in Pescara, within the Department of Music Education and Musicological Studies. She has been working in the field of music education since 1985. She completed parallel studies in Piano Performance... Read More →
Thursday July 16, 2026 10:25am - 10:50am CEST Liceo Ovidio - Room 3PIAZZA XX SETTEMBRE 13, 67039 SULMONA (AQ)
Music is a powerful medium through which bilingual families negotiate culture, language, and emotion. This study examines how parent-musicians in American–Chinese and Italian–Chinese households use everyday musical practices to shape their young children’s bilingual identities, agency, and developmental trajectories.
Professor of Music Education, Conservatory of Adria
Dr. Zhou is a dedicated music educator whose mission is to help students discover happiness, a sense of ownership, and confidence in learning. She currently works at the Conservatory of Adria, Italy, where she teaches music pedagogy and English. After spending 12 years studying and... Read More →
Thursday July 16, 2026 10:25am - 10:50am CEST Liceo Ovidio - Room 4PIAZZA XX SETTEMBRE 13, 67039 SULMONA (AQ)
Christiane Karam presents The Voices Method, an innovative approach using the human voice as a somatic healing tool. Through improvisation, breathwork, toning, and Eastern singing traditions, participants explore trauma release, self-discovery, and empowerment. This transformative work addresses vocal, mental, physical, and spiritual health, guiding individuals from internalized voices toward authentic expression and freedom.
Born into a legacy of resilience—with genocide in her DNA as the descendant of Armenian genocide survivors and having grown up amid violent conflict— Christiane Karam has transformed personal trauma into a powerful healing methodology. As a Professor of Voice, Ensemble, and Songwriting... Read More →
Thursday July 16, 2026 11:00am - 11:25am CEST Liceo Ovidio - Room 3PIAZZA XX SETTEMBRE 13, 67039 SULMONA (AQ)
This paper analyses and critiques the depiction of popular music educators within films released in English/with English subtitles from 1940–2025. It explores how tropes such as the rejection of school policy, a lack of teaching qualifications, and depictions of binge drinking may contribute to the delegitimation of popular music education.
Thursday July 16, 2026 11:25am - 11:50am CEST Liceo Ovidio - Room 3PIAZZA XX SETTEMBRE 13, 67039 SULMONA (AQ)
A curated popular music canon, reimagined as a pedagogical tool rather than gatekeeping mechanism, streamlines repertoire selection for educators and students. Digital platforms enable dynamic, collaborative catalogs that can be expanded and updated in real time, fostering historical awareness while supporting discovery, skill-building, and collective engagement in classrooms and online communities.
Dr. Tom Zlabinger is an Associate Professor of Music at York College in New York City and a leading figure in popular music education, serving as Founding President of the Association of Popular Music Education's New York Chapter (APME-NY). With a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the... Read More →
Thursday July 16, 2026 12:00pm - 12:25pm CEST Liceo Ovidio - Room 3PIAZZA XX SETTEMBRE 13, 67039 SULMONA (AQ)
Questa sessione presenta una ricerca sulla musica popolare italiana in Puglia e Lazio, analizzando il contesto sociale del dopoguerra, le tradizioni orali e la loro reinterpretazione contemporanea attraverso interviste, analisi delle trascrizioni e pratiche compositive sviluppate nell’ambito del Global Jazz Institute
Valerio Apuzzo è un trombettista ed educatore italiano specializzato in musica jazz e classica, attualmente basato a Boston. È studente con borsa di studio completa al Berklee College of Music, dove frequenta il master in performance al Global Jazz Institute.Dopo una formazione... Read More →
Thursday July 16, 2026 12:00pm - 12:25pm CEST Liceo Ovidio - Room 4PIAZZA XX SETTEMBRE 13, 67039 SULMONA (AQ)
This presentation highlights the impact of an engaged scholarship initiative that brings Palestinian violist and composer Ramzi Aburedwan and his Dal’Ouna Ensemble to Texas Tech University for a week-long residency connecting students, artists, and the local Arab community through music of the Levant region. Building on successful residencies in 2018 and 2024, the 2025 project expands the collaboration to include a research component designed to measure the impact of cross-cultural music-making on student learning, community engagement, and cultural perception.
Through lectures, masterclasses, collaborative composition, and a culminating public concert, undergraduate and high school students work alongside world-class musicians to explore Levantine/Mediterranean popular music traditions that are underrepresented on American music programs. Participating students learned not only about musical systems and popular songs associated with the Medditerranean, but also about the role of art in society and in culture creation. Surveys and qualitative reflections gathered from students and audience members assess how musical collaboration fosters empathy, curiosity, and intercultural understanding.
Our findings suggest that experiential, cross-cultural, and collaborative encounters with global popular musics such as those presented by the Dal'Ouna ensemble can transform how students perceive both music and the world around them. The presentation situates this project within broader conversations about popular music education and global music traditions as well as how to incoporate these through education, community engagement, and musical performance. It offers a replicable model for how universities can partner with international artists, students, and local communities to bridge cultures, strengthen community ties, and foster cross-cultural understanding through music.
Associate Director for Academic Studies and Affairs, Texas Tech University
Sarai Brinker is the Associate Director for Academic Studies and Affairs at the Texas Tech University School of Music, where she also serves as a professor of practice of music humanities. Her courses examine a variety of popular music styles, and she is perhaps best known across... Read More →
Thursday July 16, 2026 12:25pm - 12:50pm CEST Liceo Ovidio - Room 3PIAZZA XX SETTEMBRE 13, 67039 SULMONA (AQ)
This paper traces the Romanesca schema from eighteenth-century gallant traditions of contemporary pop music, examining its semantic, rhetorical, and emotional functions across repertories. Combining schema theory, semiotics, and historical musicology, it argues that the Romanesca survives as a flexible tonal archetype functioning as a rhetorical cliché, shaping listener expectation and expressive continuity across cultures.
Conservatory of Music "F. Torrefranca", Vibo Valentia
Dr Marco Pollaci holds degrees from the University of Rome Tor Vergata and a PhD in Music from the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music, opera studies,music analysis, partimento traditions, schema theory, and the history of music... Read More →
Thursday July 16, 2026 4:25pm - 4:50pm CEST Liceo Ovidio - Room 3PIAZZA XX SETTEMBRE 13, 67039 SULMONA (AQ)
