Deanna Swoboda

“You can’t wait to be inspired” – Deanna Swoboda

Deanna Swoboda (@deannaswoboda)is an Associate Professor of Music at Arizona State University. She teaches tuba and euphonium, Entrepreneurship and Music courses, coaches chamber music, and designs creative music performances. Early in her career, Deanna developed the K-6th grade music program, Band Blast Off. She toured and performed at thousands of schools across the country inspiring children to play instruments.

Deanna shares how she teaches students to improvise musically, and in life, and how she encourages them to pursue and diversify their goals. We discuss our brass heroes, Deanna’s journey from clarinet to tuba and how she encourages playfulness in the practice routine. Deanna shares about her time with Dallas Brass, the challenges and opportunities of teaching during a pandemic and what’s currently inspiring her.

In this episode we touch on the following topics:

Entrepreneurship and career design
Meeting your heroes
Practice habits and structure
Being playful
Covid-19 and teaching online
Breath and breathing

Links from the episode:

Show Notes:

How to organize your practice time (29:55)
Breathing (39:16)
Fitting your sound to the situation (45:26)
Living as a gypsy musician, life with the Dallas Brass (58:55)
What the heck are lip slurs? (55:59)
Upcoming projects (65:15)
Women in music and brass (67:17)
Inspirations (75:07)
Essential Practice Room Tools (76:44)

People Mentioned:

Tuba | The Playful Musician

Deanna Swoboda

Deanna Swoboda