Brandon Booth
At Connexions, a community-based arts school in Baltimore, Maryland, Brandon Booth, M.M. ’20 works as the arts director, vocal music teacher and department chair. Baltimore is where he grew up, and he’s giving back by teaching the arts to future generations.
“We should be able to take anyone from any walk of life and turn them into an artist by the time they leave,” he said.
Music has always been a part of his life. For his undergraduate degree, he earned a B.S. in music engineering technology at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. He traveled with the university’s concert choir and played the Tin Man in “The Wiz.”
“I was a piano major, learning everything in the studio—sound waves, math, physics. There’s so much that’s involved,” he said.
He has worked at Connexions for six years. He’s already doing the work he loves. Why get a graduate degree at Messiah?
“I wanted to dive deeper into what I already knew, to give my students my best. I felt there was something I was missing that I had to have for my students,” he explained. “[At Messiah], you’re studying French, Italian, German and Latin and how to correctly pronounce these things. In that journey is an entire wealth of experiences you engage in. This is different from the choir classroom. Let’s work on these syllables. Let’s work on these vowels.”
He says the program is also ideal for the classroom teacher, with the intensives scheduled in the summertime. The accessibility of Messiah professors—especially Rachel Cornacchio, professor of music—proved invaluable to his graduate school experience.
“Dr. C, she’s a phenomenon. The entire music staff was a family, so embracing. Maybe it’s just a Messiah thing,” he said. “They would say, ‘Hey, call me on my phone. Can I help you?’ They pulled me so far out of my comfort zone. I needed that to make me a better educator.”
So, the teacher became the student for a period of time in order to become a better teacher. As the Connexions kids enter Room #209 and meet Mr. Booth, a wealth of knowledge and expertise awaits them.