Solange Knowles Named First Scholar-In-Residence At USC’s Thornton School of Music

Solange Knowles the 39-year-old was announced as the first scholar-in-residence at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music the multihyphenate artist will also join the Dean’s Creative Vanguard Program as the second member, following Raphael Saadiq, who launched the initiative as its inaugural member last December. In her role, Knowles will lead a custom-designed, three-year residency and develop the school’s first curricular and programmatic offerings in the field of music curation. She will also teach a class in collaboration with Saint Heron, which will “explore the process of constructing curatorial frameworks alongside the context, craft and creation of musical landscapes,” set to launch in the fall of 2027. “I am a GED graduate, she explained  “I was a teenage mom. I was pregnant with my son at 17, so I didn’t get to further my education in the classical sense. But I was really blessed and honored to have enriched these other parts of education through my art, through travel [and] through the globalization of my life. “So to be able to have access and broader tools as a scholar in residence, to enrich that and deepen that, is really so exciting for me. “I think the work that she does as a music curator is very singular and very unique, so I’m hoping that she’s going to bring that uniqueness into the classroom and [her] programming,” added Thornton School of Music Dean Jason King. “I think she herself will be a model for how to do this kind of work and to do it differently.”

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