Creating Space: Addressing Equity in Classical Music through Sampling & Performance
Serving as an extension of her Master’s thesis, Maestra Chameleon will present to the Maryland arts community a mini lecture-performance exploring equity issues in classical music. She will discuss how she identified these issues from her own pre-professional experience through to her current work as a teaching artist. Maestra will then demonstrate how she is addressing them through her artistic process: using DJing and music production to reframe classical music in the modern musical world. Participants are invited to listen, self-reflect, and create actionable goals within their own professions for confronting classical music inequity.
Serving as an extension of her Master’s thesis, Maestra Chameleon will present to the Maryland arts community a mini lecture-performance exploring equity issues in classical music. She will discuss how she identified these issues from her own pre-professional experience through to her current work as a teaching artist. Maestra will then demonstrate how she is addressing them through her artistic process: using DJing and music production to reframe classical music in the modern musical world. Participants are invited to listen, self-reflect, and create actionable goals within their own professions for confronting classical music inequity.Maya "Maestra" Giles
Maya “Maestra” Giles is a violinist, teaching artist, and music technologist based in the D(M)V — Maryland. Holding a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance from Boston Conservatory and a Master of Music in Music Production, Technology and Innovation from Berklee College of Music, she creates accessible space in classical music through her artist-scholar work at the intersection of performance, research, education, and innovative re-invention. Currently a teaching artist at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Orchkids program and a Professor of Audio Production at Howard University, her teaching practice informs her artistic practice in classical music, with the aim of creating an inclusive space for all. When she isn’t teaching, you can find her mixing classical music in her DJ sets as Maestra Chameleon.