With the central focus of making it easier for wind band conductors to find repertoire written by composers from underrepresented communities, this pilot study aimed to incorporate a ChatGPT widget within The Wind Repertory Project database, allowing it to quickly pull accurate information from the corresponding website, www.windrep.org. During this research, I created a custom GPT that is directly linked to The Wind Repertory Project database and am in progress of adding the before mentioned widget. This paper documents how I obtained the knowledge necessary to link ChatGPT with The Wind Repertory Project website as well as provides a brief history of artificial intelligence (AI) and the evolution of ChatGPT.

Servant leadership is a philosophy founded by Robert K. Greenleaf. It emphasizes the leader's responsibility to serve and empower their followers rather than the leader's authority or control over them. While this approach has been widely studied in various organizational settings, its application to the area of music, specifically large ensemble conducting, remains relatively underexplored.As part of this case study, I interviewed six conductors of large ensembles whose groups perform at a high level, but who also place a premium on the needs, happiness, and empowerment of the musicians in their groups. At the same time, I surveyed published literature on the topics of conductor leadership philosophy in North America and servant-leadership principles, specifically the work of Robert K. Greenleaf. This study has brought to light many positive aspects of servant leadership. We also identify some challenges institutions/structures in general create that make servant leadership challenging. Based on the responses participants gave, we can begin to see there is the possibility of serving our ensemble members, giving them agency in rehearsals to be artists, achieve high standards, and help everyone grow as people beyond their musical development.

One way in which public school band directors hone their conducting skills beyond their initial academic training is by attending conducting workshops. These workshops, which usually range in duration from one day to a full week give conductors the opportunity to obtain critical feedback from recognized pedagogues, helping them improve, among other things, their conducting gestures, rehearsal techniques, and score study abilities. Offered at various times throughout the year with many of them taking place during the summer when public school educators do not have teaching responsibilities, most band conducting workshops are designed to be inclusive of anyone in search of professional development opportunities. However, the costs often associated with attending a workshop can be challenging for many people. The goal of this study is to take the potential professional development yielded from a traditional in-person conducting workshop and transition it to a one-on-one online format that will not only allow for similar growth found with traditional in-person workshops, but also provide additional benefits unique to the virtual setting. Based on the findings in this study, the virtual platform has the potential to cover many of the same goals as the traditional workshop. And while there were some components of the traditional workshop that could not be produced virtually, there were some unintended positives that the virtual workshop provided. Among those positives were addressing issues of equity and access, while also building professional relationships, that in turn, could result in graduate school opportunities.