Nicholas Patrick Quigley

Boston University | BU · Music Education

In this qualitative, exploratory study we examined the music education backgrounds and current creative practices of thirteen self-described do-it-yourself (DIY) musicians from around the United States. A growing community of scholars within and outside of education have noted the relative inclusionary nature of DIY communities as compared to mains...

Inspired by minimal techno of the 80s and 90s and the Deep Listening practices of Pauline Oliveros, Ione, and Heloise Gold, Dàñçß is a collection of instrumental minimal electronica songs designed as both a soundtrack from a dream where dance music is heard or dancing takes place, and as ambient dance music one could potentially meditate and fall a...

Throughout my time recording in nature preserves, I experienced how listening to ecosystems filled wide gaps in my own music education. We can learn a lot about our ecosystem by listening; thus, we can learn a lot about ourselves. My goal in designing this project was to empower my students to listen to their ecosystem, connect with its teachings a...

For the 2022–2023 school year at Margaret L. Donovan Elementary of Randolph, Massachusetts, my teaching schedule included something new. Four teaching blocks per week were titled “intervention” and were meant to serve students who required support beyond what they could receive in traditional classroom settings. Each week I met with small groups of...

Despite the National Coalition for Arts Standards providing a framework for creative and integrative music education, relatively few opportunities for students to express their creativity and connect with music in their lives and culture exist due to a fixation on competitive performance. Such a disproportionate reliance on performance-based music...

As I traverse the neurotypical expectations of the world, I am often left asking, “Why is this happening to me?” Before I landed on the album title, I asked the question more frequently and found humor in its absurdity. That absurdity was also expressed in the generative electronic music I was producing, which I was compelled to complete with spoke...

Massachusetts Music Educators Journal, 69(4), 12–14

We all have an idea of the educator we would like to be, but often there are overwhelming barriers to us achieving that goal—barriers that are not related to our content or pedagogical knowledge. New music educators, in particular, face challenges they were not prepared for. These challenges include finding individual support within their school an...

https://youtu.be/jZuhaJinyhw

This music came to be throughout my time living in Boston, MA as a graduate student of music education, when I would sit down at the piano almost daily to improvise. This became a therapeutic ritual during which I would ring myself out of waters dirtied by navigating uncertain personal and professional footings, and becoming evermore enraged by soc...

The album can be purchased and streamed on all major music platforms, including Bandcamp: https://qmusicandarts.bandcamp.com/album/soundtrack-for-dance-or-movement-1

Play became critical as I stepped into my full-time elementary music educator role. Every day, I saw the joy and learning play facilitated for my students and myself as I collaborated with them. Simultaneously, I saw play's healing power, as my students in a large municipality exhibited much more violence in their play than I was used to seeing in...

Inspired by Brian Eno’s minimalist electronica and creative compositional technique of making music “for” specific places and by a painter who described Interventions 1 – 5 as inspiring “background music” for their time in the studio, each piece in this collection started from an imagined space for which it could be intended to be played. However,...

This project highlights environmental degradation in a site that is supposed to be conserved. As I started this project, I intended to capture field recordings from my favorite local natural spaces to incorporate the recordings into compositions celebrating them. However, throughout the summer of 2019, making field recordings drew my attention to t...

https://youtu.be/wGSjrS757J8

Interventions 6 – 10 is a collection of chamber music and contemporary alternative songs by Nicholas Patrick Quigley. Building off Interventions 1 – 5 , which was produced with the intention of providing a “gallery experience,” 6 – 10 goes further to provide environmental soundscapes and digital sound sources to sometimes provide a sense of distanc...

The album can be purchased and streamed on all major music platforms, including Bandcamp: https://qmusicandarts.bandcamp.com/album/interventions-6-10

This project-thesis introduces an elementary general music curriculum designed to empower students towards creative music making. Building off the work related to creativity in music education by Green (2005), Hickey (2001), and Ruthmann (2008), this curriculum consists of two parts which highlight fundamental musical skill development and creative...

The Graduate Research Session at the conference will be held on Thursday March 1st from 4-5pm. At this session, graduate students from institutions from across the state will present a series of lightning talks where each presenter will briefly share the purpose and findings of their research study, and share a few implications for music education...

Interventions 1 – 5 is a collection of chamber music and contemporary alternative songs by Nicholas Patrick Quigley. The intent is to provide an experience comparable to moving around in a gallery, from ‘intervention’ to ‘intervention.’ Some pieces are single-movement in a sense, and others break down into smaller sections called ‘episodes.’ Interv...

The album can be purchased and streamed on all major music platforms, including Bandcamp: https://qmusicandarts.bandcamp.com/album/interventions-1-5