Claire Fassnacht (’17)
Claire Fassnacht is a musician, dancer, educator, and up-and-coming arts administrator from Chicago, IL. She spent a year and a half living in Bali, Indonesia, studying traditional Balinese gamelan music and dance. She plans to use her skills from the Arts Administration program to begin or develop a nonprofit organization to cultivate communities and awaken people’s creativity through gamelan music and dance performance.
Gamelan music can incorporate musicians of every skill and ability to learn music person-to-person rather than reading sheet music, which Claire believes is a great window of opportunity to bring together people of different backgrounds and skill levels. Through fostering a program like this, communities can benefit from a greater sense of unity and an appreciation of diverse cultures.
Most recently, Claire directed the chamber group Gamelan Cita Suara to perform at the Morton Arboretum’s Destination Asia music festival in Illinois, and is now playing and teaching with Gamelan Galak Tika at MIT in Boston, MA.
Claire holds a Bachelor’s degree in Percussion Performance with a minor in Religious Studies from Lawrence University in Appleton, WI.
“I’m very impressed by the knowledgeable, expert, approachable, compassionate professors in the program. The courses I’ve taken consist of a very diverse group of artists and professionals and I learn so much just from my colleagues. I look forward to the semesters ahead!”