EVA Webinar
Supporting Muslim Students During Concert Season

The spring concert season shouldn't force Muslim students to choose between their faith and their ensemble. But navigating religious observance in music programs requires more than good intentions. It demands genuine understanding.

Together, we'll explore Islamic perspectives on music, learn to schedule with cultural sensitivity, and discover Middle Eastern and North African repertoire that enriches our programming. Instead of accommodation as afterthought, we'll focus on building truly inclusive communities where all students belong.

Dr. André de Quadros is a professor of music at Boston University with affiliations in African, African American & Black Diaspora, Asian, Jewish, Muslim studies, prison education, and Forced Migration. As a choral conductor, artist, scholar, and human rights activist, he has worked in over 40 countries in the most diverse settings including professional ensembles, projects with prisons, psychosocial rehabilitation, refugees, and victims of sexual violence, torture, and trauma. His work crosses race and mass incarceration, peacebuilding, forced migration, and Islamic culture. He directs Common Ground Voices (Jerusalem), Common Ground Voices / La Frontera (Mexico-US), the Manado State University Choir (Indonesia), the Muslim Choral Ensemble (Sri Lanka), VOICES 21C (USA), and the World Muslim Choral Ensemble (Sri Lanka). He is the creative director of The Choral Commons. In 2019, he was a Distinguished Academic Visitor at the University of Cambridge. He has over 50 choral editions to his credit, and he has received awards from the American Choral Directors Association, Choral Arts New England, and Chorus America.

Lisa Urkevich, PhD, is a scholar and cultural leader in the heritage and music of Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Gulf States, where she has lived, taught, and conducted field research for more than three decades--beginning in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s and later spending 20 years based in Kuwait. Her work bridges scholarship with institution building: she was the founding director of the first museum-heritage center established under Saudi Vision 2030, and has held senior academic positions as inaugural head of Arts and Humanities, department chair, and executive director. She also serves as an advisor to governments and corporations on cultural and educational policy and strategy.

Before moving to the Arabian Peninsula, Dr. Urkevich was a professor at Boston University where she held a joint appointment in the College of Fine Arts, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She has also taught at Bucknell University and the University of Maryland. She is a Harvard University Fellow, a two-time Senior Fulbright Scholar, and recipient of the Alumna of the Year Award at the University of Maryland. Since 2017 she has served as General Editor of Symposium, the flagship journal of the College Music Society, the world’s largest academic music association. She has a PhD from the University of Maryland; MM, Florida State University; BS, Towson University; and BA, University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Free Registration

Monday, March 9th

7:00 PM ET

Please note that no recording of this webinar will be made public in order to protect the intellectual property of our presenters. Those wishing to join us must attend synchronously.