Call for Articles

American Suzuki Journal

Themes Overview, Volume 54 (2025–2026)

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Upcoming:
Spring 2026: Creativity and Collaboration – April 1, 2026
Summer 2026: Defining Suzuki Success – July 1, 2026

Previous:
Winter 2025/2026: Optimizing and Anti-Optimizing Suzuki – Jan. 1, 2026
Fall 2025: Against Nihilism – Oct. 1, 2025

Do you have a burning Suzuki question? Let the ASJ help! In our column Ask an Expert, your queries will be answered by an expert from its particular field. Need help on a particular teaching point? Struggling to balance students and their caregivers? How to balance your teaching studio budget? We’ll connect you with an expert—from the Suzuki world or beyond—to shed some light on your question. Nothing is too big or too small, and anonymous questions are accepted!

Creativity and Collaboration

Spring 2026, ASJ Volume 54, Number 3
Submission Deadline: April 1, 2026

Collaboration is baked into the heart of the Suzuki Method, appearing in the form of group class, the Suzuki Triangle, Summer Institutes, any musical performance, and so much more. Collaboration enables our work and ideas to become grander, farther-reaching, and more meaningful. For this issue of the ASJ, we want to examine the creative potential of collaboration.

Collaboration

• How does collaboration appear in your school or studio?
• How do you encourage collaboration with other students, teachers, and parents?
• What have you learned from your collaborations?
• Describe a creative project or idea that was strengthened through collaboration.
• What other non-Suzuki methods or schools have you worked with, and what did you learn from them?

Creativity

We’re also interested in your creative process. What does it mean to be a creative Suzuki teacher, a creative Suzuki program builder, and a creative musician? How does this mesh with your collaborations? How do the ideas of creativity and collaboration play off each other in your work?

The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2026. Our submission guidelines and submission form can be found here: https://suzukiassociation.org/manuscript-guidelines/. Please contact ASJ Editor Andrew Braddock with any thoughts or questions: [email protected].

Defining Suzuki Success

Summer 2026, ASJ Volume 54, Number 4
Submission Deadline: July 1, 2026

There are a dizzying number of ways we can define success. It differs from person to person, student to student, and parent to parent. We can even have different interpretations of what Shinichi Suzuki meant by success. For this issue, we’d like to cast a broad net toward the idea of defining success. 

• How do you define success for your students? For yourself? 
• What is your own goal of your work? 
• What are your concrete and/or abstract goals?
• How do you track socio-emotional learning? 
• If character development is a key indicator of success, how do we track it?
• What is musical or pedagogical “excellence”?

The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2026. Our submission guidelines and submission form can be found here: https://suzukiassociation.org/manuscript-guidelines/. Please contact ASJ Editor Andrew Braddock with any thoughts or questions: [email protected].

Previous Themes

Optimizing and Anti-Optimizing Suzuki

Winter 2025/2026, ASJ Volume 54, Number 2
Submission deadline: January 1, 2026

We’ve all been bombarded with posts and YouTube ads promising “Ten Life Hacks To Optimize Your Life.” While most of this is internet clutter, the trend of optimization stems from our desire to streamline and simplify our lives. So, that got us thinking: Can Suzuki be “optimized”? Or is the Suzuki Method anti-optimizable? What can be simplified and streamlined without changing the essence of the Method, or is that even possible?

Suzuki teaching allows for uncertainty, disorder, and space for mistakes, all of which would be sacrificed on the altar of optimization. How does this, and Suzuki teaching in general, fit in with our thinking of efficiency, productivity, and progress?

We welcome articles that view our Suzuki practices through the lens of optimization, for or against, or from a completely different angle. But please, spare us all from the hypothetical YouTube video “Top 10 Ways to Hack the Suzuki Method!!!!!”

The deadline for submissions is January 1, 2025. Our submission guidelines and submission form can be found here: https://suzukiassociation.org/manuscript-guidelines/. Please contact ASJ Editor Andrew Braddock with any thoughts or questions: [email protected].

Against Nihilism: Painting a Powerful Future

Fall 2025, ASJ Volume 54, Number 1
Submission deadline: October 1, 2025

For this issue of the ASJ, we want you to draw your vision of a bright future. The world can be a scary place, and it can be easy to slip into a feeling of nihilism, that things have no meaning. As teachers (and as humans), we have fears for the future. We want to know how you face these fears. What do you see as an upcoming or current challenge in the work of music education? 

But also as teachers, we are tasked with building, shaping, and creating the future—an inherently optimistic perspective. What are you doing to shape the future of education, music, and the Suzuki Method? What are your priorities for your studio, students, and your community, and how do you realize them?

We know that these are big questions, and we encourage you to dream as broadly as possible! 

The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2025. Our submission guidelines and form can be found here: https://suzukiassociation.org/manuscript-guidelines/. Please contact ASJ Editor Andrew Braddock with any thoughts or questions: [email protected].