Eric Booth

Eric Booth is widely regarded as one of America's most creative and effective teachers of the arts. After 20 years as an actor in dozens of Broadway, off-Broadway and regional productions, he began his career as an arts educator. In addition to teaching theatre at Stanford University and New York University, Booth has lectured, led workshops, and been a visiting scholar at more than 30 universities and 60 cultural institutions and schools nationwide. In 1993, he became the founding director of the Teacher Center at the Leonard Bernstein Center. He co-designed and taught the Arts and Education Program at the Juilliard School and led the Morse Fellowship Program there from 1994 to 2000, considered a national model for teaching artist training. He consults to many organizations, cities, and states and businesses around the country, including several large orchestras and national service agencies. He is the co-founder and co-leader of the Community Engagement Lab, a national co-commissioning project which weaves the development of new orchestral works with bold community engagement design and practice. In addition to his acting and teaching careers, Booth founded Alert Publishing, Inc., in 1985, which analyzed research on trends in American lifestyles. He is the author of several books, including The Everyday Work of Art: How Artistic Experience Can Transform Your Life (Sourcebooks, 1997) and The Music Teaching Artist's Bible (Oxford University Press, 2009). In April 2009, Booth visited the Center to discuss The Music Teaching Artist's Bible.