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Yearly Archives: 2016
SOUNDCHECK: $10 Tickets for All Students
Registration opens today for the Nashville Symphony’s SOUNDCHECK student access ticket program for the 2016-17 season, beginning with our performances of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, September 22 – 24. SOUNDCHECK provides $10 tickets to all Aegis Sciences Classical Series performances for ALL students, K – 12 through university and graduate school.
$10 student tickets are limited to one per student and are available for purchase beginning two weeks prior to each applicable concert up until show time.
Free Day of Music 2016
Here is your interactive, one-stop rundown of the Nashville Symphony’s 11th Annual Free Day of Music. This year’s event will be held on Saturday, October 22, as always at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.
Performances showcasing more than 20 different musical acts will be held from 11 am to 9 pm on four stages located both inside and outside Schermerhorn. A diverse array of performers from throughout the community will present a wide range of musical styles including classical, country, rock, jazz, soul, world music and more. Follow the links to learn more about each performer or ensemble.
Masterclass with Simone Porter, October 27
Simone Porter
The celebrated young violinist Simone Porter will be joining the Nashville Symphony this fall for two performances of Samuel Barber’s spectacular Violin Concerto under the direction of music director Giancarlo Guerrero on October 28 & 29.
We’re thrilled to announce that in addition to performing with the symphony, Simone Porter will hold a masterclass for pre-college violin on Thursday, October 27 from 7 – 8:30 pm on the stage of Laura Turner Hall at Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Students, parents, and teachers are invited to make reservations and plan to attend this very special event – and violin students who have not yet graduated from high school are encouraged to submit an application to perform in the masterclass.
Announcing the Accelerando Inaugural Class
from my Instagram feed: the first class of Accelerando poses with Nashville Symphony music director Giancarlo Guerrero, August 20, 2016
This month saw the end of a long and thorough audition process that began on March 12 and led to the selection of our first ever class of students who are beginning the Accelerando program this fall. Speaking on my own behalf and that of the Nashville Symphony and our community partners: we are thrilled!
Our first class of Accelerando students represents the dynamic diversity of Middle Tennessee well: each of the six students in grades 7 -10 attends a different school, two in Rutherford County and the other four at Metro Nashville Public Schools. Our inaugural class of student instrumentalists collectively play violin, viola, flute, bassoon, and trombone, and will begin weekly lessons with Nashville Symphony musicians in September, as part of a comprehensive scholarship program of activities to prepare them for music school at the college level.
Corinne Bailey Rae at The Cannery Ballroom
from my instagram feed: Corinne Bailey Rae at the Cannery Ballroom, Nashville, August 16, 2016
On Tuesday night my son and I heard Corinne Bailey Rae‘s performance at The Cannery Ballroom here in Nashville – the sixth stop on the first leg of her 2016 world tour.
I’ve admired Corinne’s music since I was introduced to her many years ago, but this was the first time I heard her sing live. It was a wonderful, moving experience.
Parents, Students, & Teachers: Provide Feedback to Tennessee Department of Education on ESSA
Grannis Photography
If you are concerned about changes to education law and how the Every Student Succeeds Act will be implemented, please take the time to contribute your voice to the discussion. I am passing along the message below from our friends at the Tennessee Arts Commission on behalf of arts educators across Tennessee who worked hard this summer to gather relevant and appropriate recommendations together:
We have four days people!
The Count
Music City Youth Orchestra students warm up before a concert, May 22, 2011, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville
The Count is a concentration exercise – a group activity – that I used with my student ensembles in the last few minutes before going on stage for a performance. It is a very useful thing to do! and became something of a special ritual with my ensembles.
I didn’t invent The Count, although I had never heard it called by any name before my students began calling it this. I first encountered it in the early 1990s when I witnessed Ellen Provost, a teacher at Blue Rock School, use it with a group of 6th graders before the performance of a play – I believe it was either The Conference of the Birds or Monkey. I began using it myself at Carrollwood Day School years later, and it was at CDS that it became a regular practice – something I always did with my students before a performance, if possible, for the rest of my teaching career.
In Dulci Jubilo
the opening of In dulci jubilo, Piæ Cantiones, 1582
Part of a series of articles on
Preparing a School Winter Solstice Performance
In dulci jubilo is a famous medieval Christmas carol. It is a macaronic carol (i.e. the text is in a mixture of languages): the original text alternates between German and Latin. The words are attributed to the German mystic (and student of Meister Eckhart) Heinrich Seuse (1295 – 1366), and describes his vision of singing angels dancing with him.
It is one of our oldest, loveliest, and most important carols. The lilting, singsongy, exuberant melody and the relative ease with which they were able to learn it made it popular with my students of all ages – from elementary through high school. Although not a piece I included as an annual repeating feature of Winter Solstice performances, I would program In dulci jubilo every few years, and most of my students sang or played it in a Winter Solstice production at some point.
Personent Hodie
Part of a series of articles on
Preparing a School Winter Solstice Performance
Personent Hodie is a medieval Christmas carol. The form in which it comes down to us was first published in Piæ Cantiones, a collection of medieval Latin songs that were sung at the cathedral school in Turku (Finland). It was compiled by Jaakko Suomalainen, a Finnish clergyman, and published in 1582. The carol’s melody is very similar to a hymn found in a German manuscript from 1360, and it is assumed that Personent Hodie dates from the mid-14th century.
Christmas in July
Preparing a Winter Solstice Celebration For Your Students
For many people, the idea of Christmas in July is something of a spoof or a stunt – stores have sales or bars have happy hour specials, that sort of thing. When I took a brief hiatus from teaching in the late 1990s and ran the CD store at Barnes & Noble in Clearwater, on July mornings before the store opened I would sometimes play The Klezmonauts’ Oy to the World! – a raucous high-energy collection of Klezmer versions of traditional Christmas carols – to begin the day with good humor and fun.
But for many music teachers, summer time is the season to plan curriculum for the school year to come, and for years, Christmas in July to me meant: the beginning of half of each year spent planning, preparing, and executing the fall semester. In several schools I taught at, this inevitably culminated in a grand holiday performance that included all my students, usually held in the beginning of December and inevitably including anywhere from a fair amount to a veritable cornucopia of holiday-themed music and other forms of celebration.
Walter Bitner 