Kính T. Vu is an assistant professor of music in music education at Boston University. He instructs music teacher education courses and advises graduate theses. In 2020, Kính and his colleague André de Quadros published the first-ever volume about forced human displacement and its relationship to music teaching and learning. My Body Was Left on the Street: Music Education and Displacement (Brill-Sense, 2020) includes contributions by incarcerated persons, members of LGBTQ communities, war refugees, climate migrants, children, people experiencing homelessness, and music educators.
Part of Kính’s scholarly-creative production includes a 2023 documentary entitled Song of Earthroot (4th District Company) in which music-making plays a central role in his narrative about adoption, music, and self-discovery. Song of Earthroot was selected for public media’s affiliate Social Impact Film Festival (2024) and received the New York International Film Award (2024) for first time directors of a feature film. Kính has published book chapters about care, intercultural sensitivity, LGBTQ issues, and adoption as well as research articles focused on engaged pedagogy, global music education, and displacement. Current research projects include a book about transracial-transnational adoption and music education as well as articles on global music pedagogies, forced human displacement, and secondary general music dispositional learning.
In 2024, Kính was awarded the Pennsylvania State University, College of Arts and Architecture, School of Music Distinguished Alumni Award. He recently completed six years as a faculty-in-residence for Boston University’s Residence Life community and one year as a subcommittee chair for the Provost’s Committee on Sexual Assault and Harassment Prevention. Along with Puget Sound University assistant professor of music education Dr. Tina Huynh, Kính is currently planning the Second AAPI and Asian Canadian Music Education Gathering (conference) which will occur in St. Paul, Minnesota in July 2025. He and Tina convened the first-ever AAPI and Asian Canadian Gathering in Orange County, California in 2023.
Currently observing a leave-of-absence (AY 2024-25) to observe the 50th anniversary of reunification between North and South Vietnam, Kính lives in Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a., Saigon) where he was born and subsequently abandoned at the end of the American War in either 1974 or 1975. Kính earned degrees from Westminster College (PA) (BM), The Pennsylvania State University (MM), and the University of Minnesota (PhD). Aside from work, Kính enjoys traveling in East and Southeast Asia, exercising, cooking, talking to dogs like they’re people, and admiring sparkly objects such as holiday lights and glitter.
Kính T. Vũ On the Power of Music Education
Photo Credit: Tee Tran (2022)
