Eric Armstrong and Noam Lemish win AMPD Teaching Awards
Eric Armstrong – AMPD Senior Teaching Award Winner
“The OER we are creating now will serve as models for others to get involved and to show that it can be done. People start to think differently about the nature of teaching, the nature of resources and the nature of our responsibility to create a different kind of learning experience.”
Eric Armstrong has taught voice, speech, dialects and text to aspiring and established artists across North America. Armstrong’s web-based technologies approach to voice coaching extends to his pedagogical philosophy as he pioneers the world of open education resources (OER).
This year, Armstrong converted his textbook, Lexical Sets for Actors, into an internationally accessible OER – a free, digitally accessible textbook and learning guide. He approached the creation of the textbook learner with accessibility and demographics variability, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and non-binary communities, in mind.
Noam Lemish – AMPD Junior Teaching Award Winner
Pianist, composer, educator and scholar – Noam Lemish’s prolific career is global, playing across the world from the United States to Bhutan. This year, Lemish earned the AMPD Junor Teaching Award for his excellence in inspiring young musicians through jazz studies, composition, Jewish music, polyidiomatic improvisation and more.
Learning doesn’t stop outside the classroom. Through the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies, Lemish secured a $40,000 gift from the Azrieli Foundation to support the Jewish Music at York pilot project. The project sees leading Jewish musicians sharing performance tools and techniques with students on campus.
