Designing an Interdisciplinary Learning Environment for Conservatory Students: Using the Liberal Arts to Expand Education and Better Support Performance Interpretation

This paper discusses designing an interdisciplinary learning environment to promote learning of the liberal arts for advanced music students in order to expand the boundaries of their education experience beyond the technical mastery of their musical instruments. The paper discusses the utilization of salient features of information, communications, and technology and the use of instructional theory to promote the understanding of how individual pieces of music can be connected to knowledge of the context in which they were created to support the understanding of the relationship between experience in the world and musical composition.