Bluegrass

One of the best grades I got in college was from a half-course on Bluegrass music. It was a course designed for non-majors, but I was so taken with the McLain Family Band when they came to Carleton to perform and record Phil Rhodes' Concerto for Bluegrass Band and Orchestra that I had to take the class.

Last night Pomona College hosted a Bluegrass and Old-Time Music concert with resident professor Joti Rockwell and guests Richard Greene and Tom Sauber. Little Bridges was pretty full with an enthusiastic crowd, and even though I was tired, I'm glad I made the effort to go to the concert.

Being at the concert has revived my memories and interest in the McLains, so I started doing a little looking on the internet, and Ruth McLain Smith has a youtube channel with some videos of the family (loving that 1980s hair...) Some of their recording are archived and accessible here.

Composition Competition

Last fall I learned about a composition competition for the Washington Recorder Society. I thought this would be a good opportunity to work on an original composition for recorder ensemble. Knowing that the deadline would be Feb. 1, 2013, I knew I had time to come up with something.

I have slowly been working on two pieces for four recorders. One is a revamped piece I wrote for string orchestra called Minor Fantasy, and one is completely new which I named From the Sea. My working title for the latter was Dorian since I wrote this minimalist piece in the dorian mode. I knew that wasn't a great title, so today I hunted around on the internet for a little bit and found in two places that Dorian can mean "from the sea" or "gift from the sea".

These pieces are supposed to be 4-6 minutes long for an upper intermediate group. I am not sure what level that is, and I have no illusions of winning any prize, but at least I now have two original compositions that I did not have last fall. Thank goodness for deadlines!

Extending Lessons

I don't get to see my general music students very much. I get each 4th-6th grade class once every two weeks for 45 minutes (which ends up being closer to 35-40 minutes). I used to think that I should cover as much territory as possible, so I came up with a different thing to cover each lesson. I have come to realize that it is far better to learn one concept very well, attacking it from various different directions each time.

Now we are working on meter. Last session we sang Frere Jacques to various meters 2/4, 6/8, 3/4, 4/4 and then 5/4. This session we will be playing a bordun for the song in the various meters, starting with body percussion. Then we'll be moving on to lessons from Randy and Jeff's Gameplan Grade 5 which address 5/4 and mixed meter.

Throw in singing some Beatles songs (many of my students are unfamiliar with this iconic group), and I think we'll have some good times in music class for the next few months.

Playing Music

I love the fact that we don't call what we do as "work music" but rather, "play music." I know that actually making music takes a great deal of discipline and practice, but the goals are to actually play.  Over winter break one of my self-assigned tasks was to watch a few TED talks that I had heard about. Normally I find out about these talks but don't have 30 minutes at that time to watch, and then I forget about them. This time I wrote them down and the first one on my list was a talk about play by Stuart Brown. You can watch the video here. (I had a hard time with streaming from the TED site, so I hit the download button at the bottom of the video and watched it that way.)

I would love to work on ways in which to get my students to play more in music class. Of course, I have basic skills I need to teach them in order for them to have some kind of music vocabulary with which to play, and since I only see them once a week or so, this is tricky. Now I need to find a TED talk about incorporating play into the classroom. Anyone?

Unexpected Intermission

Yesterday the Claremont Concert Orchestra performed our final concert for the semester. We knew from Saturday night's first incarnation of the concert that we would be done in 50 minutes. I was going to blog about how 50 minutes almost doesn't even seem like a concert, even though we played the fabulous Dvorak's 8th. To make the concert a slight bit longer we also played the Farandole from Bizet's L'Arlesienne Suite #1.

Anyway, something happened in yesterday's performance that I have never seen in all my many years of orchestral playing. One of the students was not there at the end of the Bizet, and I believe he was the timpani player. We cannot perform the Dvorak without timpani, so we begged the audience's patience and waited for 20 minutes for this student to appear on stage and ready to play. I do not know the story behind this event, but I'm sure I'll hear the details at some point.

The one funny thing that happened during our intermission was that one of the horn players started playing Joy to the World, and after a phrase, the rest of the orchestra joined in and played an impromptu rendition for two verses of the carol, much to the audience's delight.

Creativity

Recently two different websites I looked at referred to this lecture from 1991 by John Cleese about creativity. I took 30 minutes yesterday to watch it, and, although I probably knew most of the information he talked about, it's always good to be reminded to play, make time to be creative, allow creativity to work over a long time span, and don't be afraid of making a mistake.

I have been trying to think of a piece to write for recorder ensemble to send in to a contest - due Feb. 1, 2013. I want to write an original piece, and I have started a few different times, but this talk inspired me to keep at it, and I put in time yesterday working on a piece.

Cleese also talked about how to inspire creativity in the people who work for you, which in my case would be my students. I realize this occasionally that I give more opportunity to my students to improvise (I wish I could see them more than 30 minutes a week). I will go back and look at the notes from the Orff workshop I attended in September and see what I can incorporate when school resumes in January.

Round Singing

On Monday one of my second graders requested that we sing the song America (not My Country 'Tis of Thee, but the one from the Wee Sing America CD). It's very short, and I did need a few minutes of filler, so I said, sure.

After we sang it a capella, the boy who requested it wanted to know if we could sing it in a round. We had done that once before with the teacher leading one of the groups, but this time we had a sub in the room whom I know did not want to sing. So we tried it and I chose the group that had a few very strong singers in it to start and continue by themselves while I sang with the second group. They did a great job and went out of the room happy.

It warmed my heart.