Performance Calendar

Teaches

Pre-College
Classroom Studies (Music)

About

Esther Liu Harris, born in Hong Kong, and is the choral director at the Spence School teaching grade 5–12 in New York City. Dr. Harris is the lead curriculum developer and the head of the teacher-training program of the Music Essential Curriculum,Public & Continuing Education at the Tianjin Juilliard School. She is an adjunct music professor at Steinhardt New York University, teaching methodology, choral conducting, and conducting the summer institute choir at the NYU Kodály Summer Institute. She taught methodology and was a supervisor for student teachers for many years at Steinhardt New York University. She was the Visiting Assistant Professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, CUNY. She was the choral conducting instructor at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Dr. Harris is the American Choral Directors Association - NY collegiate music co-chair, and is the choral / pedagogy clinician presenting regionally and nationally: Education Through Music, National Association for Music Education, American Choral Directors Association, Carnegie Hall Residency Choral Masterwork Series, Choral Music Institute of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, Third Street Music School Settlement, American Hungarian Educators, the Eastern American Association for Church Music, the Children’s Aid Society Chorus, the Organization of American Kodály Educators, Kodály Organization in New York, and NYU Annual Lecture. In 2022, she presented internationally at the Asia Kodály Academy of Music Symposium in Singapore, her topic was “The Sequence of Musical Experience through Improvisation and Movements”.

Dr. Harris was formerly the choral director at Packer Collegiate Institute where she was named the Babbott Chair of Literature and the Arts, and on the music faculty at the Trevor Day School, and was on the faculty teaching rhythm and movements pedagogy to the master’s students who were the MAP teaching fellows at the Music Advancement Program, the Juilliard School. She has been on the Juilliard Pre-College faculty since 2004 where she has conducted the Pre-College Youth Chorus and Middle School Chorus.

Dr. Harris holds a Doctor of Education in music and music education from Teachers College, Columbia University, a MM in music education (Kodaly emphasis) from Holy Names University in Oakland, CA, and a BM in music education from San Francisco State University. She has also studied summer workshops at the Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music in Kecskemet, Hungary, and has an Orff Schulwerk Certification in music and movement education from Trevor Institute in New York. Publications and research interests include intrinsic motivation and engagement development of adolescent choral singers, the autonomous learning of student-run ensemble settings, and body percussion and movement.