Title:
Chair, Early Childhood Music
Organization:
Peabody Prep of Johns Hopkins University
Title 2:
Musicianship teacher, OrchKids
Organization 2:
Baltimore Symphony
Biography
Eric Rasmussen received his PhD in Music Education at Temple University where he studied with Dr. Edwin Gordon, the preeminent music education researcher and author. Eric specializes in the practical application of Gordon’s Music Learning Theory.
Since the fall of 2000, Eric has served as chair of the early childhood music department at the Peabody Preparatory of Johns Hopkins University where he teaches a specialized music curriculum for babies through to eight-year-old children. He has been serving as the musicianship instructor for the Baltimore Symphony’s El Sistema-inspired outreach program, OrchKids, since its inception in 2008. Since 2015, he has been providing classes to at two childcare centers: the Johns Hopkins Homewood Early Learning Center, and the Henderson-Hopkins Weinstein Early Childhood Center.
Since 1996, Eric has performed thousands of hours observing, coaching, and training scores of public school music teachers. Also during this time, he taught in several city schools, redesigned a portion of Baltimore city’s music curriculum, and led music education workshops and professional development on many topics. Eric has recently performed a research study in partnership with Dr. Charles Limb (see his TED talks on music creativity and the brain) exploring innovative ways to teach music to children with cochlear implants. He designed the curriculum as well as the measures that assess the musical understanding of children who were ostensibly deaf at birth.
Eric has specialized in early childhood and elementary general music education for the past twenty-five years, but first began his career teaching instrumental music and band in 1984. He has played trumpet in Traditional New Orleans jazz groups for over twenty years.
