ARCHIVE

Derek Baron sits beside me at the piano playing their Children’s Music, or what we call, “little pedagogical droplets” and then leads me through some of Bartók’s etudes with their left hand accompanying my right.

The listener is not addressed, I am addressed by a body pressed up gently beside me at the piano. They lead by keeping me company while the written music leads. They reassure me as I move in and out of the music’s tempo and my own time of learning.
-Making songs that teach themselves.
-Teaching is company, sitting side by side, facing the same direction.
-The teacher becomes a friend pretending the music has taken their place.
- Congratulatory, Patient, Repetitive, Self-defacing (admitting to their limits of skill)
- Welcoming the time of learning as a part of fictional time.

Derek Baron is a composer and writer in New York. They teach at Rutgers University and co-run (with Emily Martin) the record label Reading Group. Derek’s music has appeared on Recital, Freedom Garden, and other labels. https://www.readinggroup.co/index.html

Miss Othmar is the name of that teacher of Charlie Brown’s that’s heard and never seen. Her voice carries no words and transmits no facts. Her professing is an undulating song. Nevertheless C.B. and his classmates seem to follow along.

Miss Othmar is teaching over radio. Miss Othmar's Meetings with Teachers is a series that collects the voices of different teachers and facilitators from a variety of fields and their approaches to leading the listener through exercises over radio.

Timmy Simonds is an artist interested in the ways we perceive education and our expectations of the teacher cross culturally. He broadcasts regularly with Montez Press Radio and Wave Farm's WGXC 90.7-FM.