Dawn Corso

Dawn T. Corso is an Assistant Professor of Music Education and Ethnomusicology and serves as the current Coordinator for the Music Education Area at the University of Arizona's Fred Fox School of Music. Dr. Corso earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. She also holds undergraduate degrees in ethnomusicology and anthropology with a minor in psychology. Her graduate work first focused on the implementation of multicultural music education in general music settings and later shifted to informal learning processes amongst African-American children as they occurred outside school settings.

In addition to her university teaching experience, Dr. Corso has taught Pre-K general music, choir, band, and orchestra in schools and served in school and district administrative positions. She has directed several community choir and band ensembles and performed—coloratura soprano and trumpet player—in the Phoenix metropolitan area, joining local musicians of Irish and Zimbabwean musics in the Southwest and abroad when possible.

This combined background of research, teaching, and community engagement continues to refine her inquiry into multicultural music education and its definition and purpose, especially regarding epistemology, cognition, and philosophy, and has led to her current inquiry into the cultural processes of learning traditional musics and the translation of vernacular practices into formalized music education settings. She focuses on the traditional musics of Ireland and the Irish trad diaspora in the U.S. and Shona mbira dzavadzimu music of Zimbabwe.