On what would normally be a quiet Friday in June, after graduation and before summer programs kick in, the campus of the Frost School of Music was buzzing. The glass doors to classrooms in the Volpe Classroom Building revealed music educators from the Frost School and across the country leading sessions on songwriting, artificial intelligence, Latin music, and much more. In one room, a group of high school students danced through an excited rendition of “Uptown Funk” during a performance-skills class, as their teacher and scores of fellow teenagers cheered them on. On the walkway outside, grown-ups gathered in small clumps, talking animatedly.
The source of all the hubbub was the annual conference of the Association for Popular Music Education (APME), held June 3-6 at the Frost School. The group advocates for popular music to be taught as widely as classical and jazz, with the same rigor and respect. The Frost School is a leader in this area, with its pioneering Modern Artist Development and Entrepreneurship (M.A.D.E.) program and practice of teaching students to work across genres and skill sets, making it a natural locale for the event.
“It’s like a homecoming,” said Frost School associate professor Raina Murnak, who is the president of APME and was previously the vice president and a board member. Fellow Frost School professor Rey Sanchez, a founder of both M.A.D.E. and APME, brought the group’s conference here in 2015. “The Frost School has always had an integrated perspective on what it means to be a well-prepared music professional.”
The conference drew 222 attendees, largely educators from university music schools, including major institutions such as Berklee College of Music and the Thornton School of Music, as well as public and private middle and high schools. They came from across the country as well as from England, Canada, and Europe. This year’s gathering also expanded the event’s scope to the wider music world, drawing representatives from technology and audio firms such as Sony and Splice; MusicFirst, which makes music education software; SongHub, a music rights platform for students; and educational institutions such as the GRAMMY Museum.
“Popular music is a moving, breathing, living entity,” said Murnak, a pillar of the M.A.D.E. program, an ardent proponent of APME’s mission, and a dynamic presence at the conference, from giving the opening welcome speech to ordering pizza for students. “APME’s mission is to spread popular music education and expand it to include every industry that touches pop music. The conference has been a nexus of different types of thought leaders and decision-makers coming together.”
“We are also becoming seen as an educational hub for traditional music educators, who come from schools with no popular music program and are trying to start something, as well as traditional music educators, therapists, or even jazz teachers who want to know what we’re doing.”
Numerous Frost School faculty members presented at the APME conference, including professor Daniel Strange, chair of M.A.D.E., who spoke with Sam Hyken of Miami’s innovative classical-multigenre Nu Deco Ensemble, a frequent Frost School collaborator; musicology associate professor Marysol Quevedo, who led a session teaching Latin music using her class on Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance as an example; keynote speaker Carlos Rivera, the Emmy-winning film and television composer who chairs the Media Production and Scoring program; and many more.
Murnak made sure to include fun Miami-style programming on the schedule, like Cafecito breaks, DJ sets, and a salsa dance lesson, as well as a ‘speed social’ to encourage attendees from the same region to get to know each other.
One enthusiastic attendee and first-time speaker was Frost School alum Eli Yaroch, M.S. ’25, who became passionate about teaching pop music as a graduate teaching assistant and mentor in the Frost School’s Donna E. Shalala MusicReach program and is now the first doctoral student in popular music pedagogy at Indiana University’s renowned Jacobs School of Music.
“I’m trying to change the culture,” said Yaroch. “The Frost School of Music is different in how it approaches popular music— it treats it as legitimate, a real form of music. People ask how we can do that. We can do this seriously, with conservatory-caliber training. Something like 90 percent of the music we listen to is popular, but most of what is taught in schools is jazz or classical. If we change our mindset on what popular music education can be, it can be legitimate in the same way that teaching classical or jazz music is.”
A major addition to this year’s conference was the intensive APME LIVE program for nearly 100 middle and high school students from popular music programs across the country. They took classes on songwriting, performance, technology, and more, which teachers could observe; performed at the 2026 APME Live Student Festival; and joined a dance party at the Hormel Music Innovation Stage, showcasing electronic and dance music by young music makers from around the country.
Among them were around 20 teenage students from a music program at NSU University School, a private school at South Florida’s Nova Southeastern University, who seemed slightly awestruck as they played for Ian Hölljes, a lecturer in M.A.D.E. and a co-founder of famed pop/Americana group Delta Rae, in Clarke Recital Hall.
Hölljes, who listened intently as the students performed original songs and covers by earnest indie singer-songwriters such as Lizzy McAlpine and Phoebe Bridgers, offered advice and inspiration drawn from his years of successful artistry. He praised the students’ harmonies and songwriting, then suggested ways to push themselves further. “Artistry comes in many forms,” he said. “I advise studying some of the people you admire and closing the gap with them.”
“Think about the risks those writers are taking in those songs. It’s very conversational, natural language. In our creative voices, we can have an awkward gravitation to being overly poetic. Vet your lyrics and think about how you would say this naturally.”
“There’s not a moment when someone gives you permission to be as bold as the people you admire. Give yourself that permission. Start cultivating that boldness.”
Afterwards Hölljes said the APME conference was emboldening him as an educator. “I’m pretty blown away,” he said. “There’s a way in which teaching popular music and modern music artistry feels a little bit like you’re on an island. To encounter other educators doing the same work at different places along the chain, from middle school to high school to college, makes you realize how much commonality there is. It’s so validating and encouraging.”
