Nita Baxani

Born in Hong Kong to a Chinese mother and Indian father, she immigrated to the United States at a young age. She grew up in Virginia and received her Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education from Virginia Commonwealth University before moving on to attain a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from the Manhattan School of Music. As a professional singer, she performed in U.S. National Tours, as well as at numerous venues across the United States and Europe as a soloist in operas, oratorio, and world premier works.

In her capacity as an educator, she has held leadership roles in arts programs and schools in both the United States and Germany. Her career includes leadership roles as Director of Music at elementary schools, Head of Music at an international school, and Head of Elementary school where she oversaw the day-to-day management and curriculum alignment between two campuses. Her work in creating new programs and curriculum design and implementation in early childhood and elementary school music programs are collaborative in nature and cover a variety of pedagogical approaches that foster an inclusive child centered environment. As an arts advocate, Dr. Baxani enjoys creating programs and cultivating partnerships with schools and community and cultural organizations.

Dr. Baxani is passionate about early childhood education and received a Doctor of Education degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, where her dissertation focused on the musicality of infants within a childcare community. At Teachers College, she was the music instructor and researcher at the Rita Gold Early Childhood Center working with children aged 3 months to 5 years. She also taught fieldwork courses in Early Childhood Music Education and supervised student teacher candidates. Her experience as a curriculum designer range from music and movement-based curriculum for infants ages 6 months to 36 months to music in elementary school classrooms. Dr. Baxani presents at conferences in the U.S. and internationally including at ISME and ECME. Her publications and work in research focus on young children, music, and community and include special research topics such as BambinO, an opera for babies, that was presented at the Metropolitan Opera.

A versatile educator, Dr. Baxani has experience teaching music to students in K-12 classrooms in both public and private schools, as well as serving as music facilitator in after school music programs, applied voice instruction, and group music instruction. Most recently, Dr. Baxani served as Director of Music at Carlthorp School, a K-6 independent school in Santa Monica. In higher education, she has served as Adjunct Assistant Professor at CUNY, teaching early childhood and elementary school music education courses. Dr. Baxani’s training also includes Elemental Music and Dance Pedagogy from the Carl Orff Institute in Salzburg, First Steps in Music, Conversational Solfege, Orff Schulwerk Level 1, and World Music Drumming Level 1. She focuses on the whole child and community, and she is passionate in her commitment to engaging students through collaboration in music making, inspiring students of all ages “to music” together.