Napa, University of Texas to help four varsities teach music

The National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) and the Butler School of Music of the University of Texas at Austin (UT) will leverage their previous partnership from the 2013 to 2018 to building capacity in music education at four different universities of Karachi.

Napa held a press conference in this regard on Monday. The four universities include the Habib University, Institute of Business Management, Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (Szabist) and the public sector University of Karachi.

Under the programme, Napa alumni who received training at UT and some UT faculty members as well will host workshops with 20 to 28 faculty members and students from the four universities to train them in developing music curricula, teaching sound design, recording and digital composition.

The main goal of the workshops will be building capacity in music education through training of five to seven faculty members from each university. Napa and UT faculty will bring expertise in a wide range of music pedagogy, theory, performance and technologies to meet each university’s needs. Initial workshops on developing music curricula will gauge each university’s capacity and needs. Targeted workshop series on identified areas of need will follow that in fall and spring.

Dr Sonia Seeman and her associates from the Butler School of Music and South Asia Institute UT Austin have been working with Napa faculty and alumni to present logical course offerings to fulfil the needs of all the partnering universities.

Napa Music Faculty Head Nafees Ahmed said they had arranged a virtual opening ceremony and invited representatives from Napa, UT’s Butler School of Music, partner universities and the United States (US) mission in Pakistan.

US Consulate General John V Rhatigan said the programme was an important step towards promotion of music. “I welcome those universities which are part of the music programme,” he remarked and hoped that the collaboration would yield good results.

The programme, he said, would be a critical step towards music industry's prosperity and the US was looking forward to contributing to it. Napa faculty member Arshad Mahmud thanked the American music faculty and Rhatigan for their support. He said there are only few universities in Pakistan teaching music.

Dr Seeman said their experience with Napa had always been very positive. She said the Butler School of Music and South Asia Institute was formed in 1883 where rich and poor students learnt music together.