Play-a-Thon

Next week our school district's elementary instrumental students will be embarking on our first annual Play-a-Thon.  Usually at this time of year students get tired of the excitement of learning an instrument and practicing lags.  Also, as usual, music programs need money.  Put the two together, and we will hopefully light a spark.

For two weeks, students are challenged to practice as much as they can, getting sponsors to donate to the music program for every hour they practice.  We will award grand prizes at the strings and winds concerts in May - for most hours practiced, most money raised, and most sponsors gathered.  These prizes will be iPod shuffles.  That was enough to make most students enthusiastic for the competition.

Stay tuned!

Move It!

In my primary classes, I like to use this DVD - Move It!  A group of people - adults and children, perform movements to various pieces of Classical music.  The movements help define the form of each work.

Today when I used this, I had an interesting coincidence.  One of my students returned to school after her fall and broken leg, and she came to class in a wheelchair.  It just so happens that one of the people in the video is also in a wheelchair, so she could participate fully in the movement.

Tchaikovsky

This weekend the Claremont Concert Orchestra is performing Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony. I was pretty sure that I had blogged about how this piece was difficult, and that I didn't particularly like it, but hoped that it would grow on me as we practiced it. Well, I couldn't find a blog post about that, but the work has grown on me. Some passages are still quite difficult for me to play, but with practice, I have improved, especially the parts that are exposed for the viola.

Our conductor is quite passionate about Tchaikovsky and really wants us all to be as enthusiastic. While I am not a total convert (and prefer Mahler), I am certainly glad that we are playing this symphony and not any Bruckner.

Open Mike Night

Tonight Lynn and I played our first Open Mike Night at the Folk Music Center. Now that we know just what to do, we'll set up something to hold our spot in line at 4:30 p.m. so that we can play in the first set. We ended up being third to last of the second set, so we heard all the acts. Some were pretty good. Some . . . not so much, but it was mostly pretty entertaining.

We played an Irish Medley which included Star of the County Down, Merrily Kiss the Quaker and Coleraine.

If you want to see the video on youtube, you can email me, and I will send you the link.

Using Music as a Punishment...

It could have said viola....

Current String Quartet

I am starting a string quartet arrangement of What Wondrous Love is This - a lovely hymn from the Southern Harmony hymnbook in the dorian mode. What's interesting to me about this hymn is that it doesn't use the 3rd of the scale, which sets the major/minor feel in the listener's ear, although it has a definite minor cast to it. We plan to play this in church during Lent.

I really like this acapella version on youtube by Blue Highway.

What If?

In upper grade music we are learning about the 12-Bar Blues - lyrics structure, chord structure. Being that it is the Lunar New Year starting today, I have been thinking about teaching the Chinese Boatman's Chantey to the recorder students, so I had both the blues and the chantey going through my head at the same time. Perhaps I could arrange a blues version of this pentatonic song for our elementary orchestra for next year's February concert....