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Education & Community Engagement at the Nashville Symphony: Fall 2015 Review
from my Instagram feed: your Nashville Symphony Education & Community Engagement Department: (l to r) Kelley Bell, Walter Bitner, Kristen Freeman ~ during a break from filming
December is here and the holidays are upon us. Having made it through Thanksgiving already and fearing that Christmas and New Year’s may arrive before I do this, I am dedicating this post to a look back on the activities of our department this fall.
As I wrote this post, I became astounded at the ground we have covered in just the last four months – the depth of the Nashville Symphony’s engagement in our community and the wide range of educational activities we offer is truly remarkable. I am so proud to be able to come to work every day and participate in all of this!
Matthew Halls on J.S. Bach and the Oregon Bach Festival
Part 2 of 3
Continued from An Interview with Matthew Halls (Part 1)
I asked Matthew Halls what he felt about dramatizations of the Bach Passions – for example, the stagings of the St. Matthew and St. John Passions by Peter Sellars with the Berlin Philharmonic.
Matthew Halls: I have many different feelings on this. The work that Peter Sellars did with the Berlin Philharmonic is wonderful – it’s inspiring, it gives you a new insight. I also saw an incredible realization by Deborah Warner (with the English National Opera), and Katie Mitchell’s done some work in this field as well. There seems to have been a trend in recent years to give dramatic presentations of Bach’s great sacred works.
Fundamentally, I have nothing against this. Any way we can present music from the distant past in a way which is going to make the presentation of the ideas more vivid for someone coming to see the piece for the first time: that gets a big gold star in my book! That a wonderful way of helping and reinterpreting the music of the past.
I think that it comes with the acknowledgement that I’m not quite sure what Bach would have made of it. But at the same time – this is the 21st century and we face different challenges. As long as the integrity of the music survives then I’m really interested and excited by all sorts of approaches to the music.
What Kind of Human Being Do You Want To Be?
Music Education and the Whole Child
This weekend I attended a chamber music recital presented by a small local community music school. Roughly twenty students from middle and high school presented an hour of short pieces for small ensembles: music for woodwinds and strings, with a couple of pieces featuring voice as well. The students represented a wide range of experience, accomplishment, and commitment; some of these children will go on to study music in college and perhaps even pursue professional careers as performers or educators, while others will likely put their instruments away for good by the time they graduate from high school.
Regardless of the differences in commitment for the students and their families – to say nothing of the teachers – all of them clearly regard music as an important part of their lives. Parents make it possible for their children to attend weekly lessons and regular ensemble rehearsals, have the instruments and other materials they need, and the students must exert consistent effort over a long period of time (years) to learn how to play their instruments and develop at least enough acumen that they derive satisfaction from the process.
Why do they do it?
How to Teach Recorder Fingerings
This post is especially for those teaching the recorder to children in school settings – but it might be worth a look if you are learning how to play the instrument as well.
playing recorder with Blue Rock School students, 1991
I hope that this brief post will be helpful to those teaching recorder in elementary school who have little or no background with the instrument as players themselves. My impression is that most elementary school music teachers haven’t actually studied recorder for its own sake (e.g taken lessons, played in a consort or performed solo recitals on recorder, etc.). I thought about the topic of this post recently when I remembered that I have never encountered middle or high school students that had been taught recorder in elementary school (by someone other than me) who were familiar with this system.
Nashville Symphony Announces Accelerando
In 2016, the Nashville Symphony will launch Accelerando, an intensive program designed to prepare gifted young students of diverse backgrounds for pursuing music at the collegiate level and beyond.
Accelerando seeks to create professional opportunities for musicians from ethnic communities underrepresented in today’s orchestras by providing them with instruction, mentorship, performance experience and assistance with applying for music schools. With the resources of a major American orchestra, these students will be able to realize their full potential and will form the next generation of orchestra musicians.
Solfège With Amadeus
Part 4 of a 4-Part Series
Go to Part 1: The Joy of Solfège
Go to Part 2: The Legacy of Guido d’Arezzo
Go to Part 3: Teaching Music With Solfège
This Epilogue to my series of posts on Solfège recounts examples of solfège exercises I used in high school choir rehearsals, some anecdotes about singing Mozart’s Requiem on solfège syllables, and some unexpected things we learned from doing this.
Teaching Music With Solfège
Part 3 in a 4-part series
Go to Part 1: The Joy of Solfège
Go to Part 2: The Legacy of Guido d’Arezzo
This is a simple but somewhat thorough description of the syllables for movable do solfège with la-based minor and how I applied them in my work as a teacher. I do not claim this method as an example of haute Kodály, Gordon, or any other technique – for me solfège was always a means to an end, not an end in itself. We used it for exercises to develop skills, and to learn notes accurately – and when these goals were achieved we left it behind.
Is It A Fiddle Or A Violin?
(l to r) David Coe and Matt Combs perform for a group of students attending Is It A Fiddle Or A Violin? at Schermerhorn Symphony Center
Today our unique program Is It A Fiddle Or A Violin? – a collaboration with the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum – begins its ninth season.
Targeted at students in Kindergarten through Fifth Grade, this free two-hour program provides children and their chaperones with tours of both Schermerhorn Symphony Center and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and features a musical presentation and dialogue by two local musicians about the employment of the violin (or fiddle!) in both classical and country music. Thousands of children have attended this program over the years, in what are often their first experiences at two of Nashville’s most important cultural venues.
David Coe and Matt Combs – two local musicians who have been with the program since the beginning – largely co-wrote the featured presentation which gives the program its title. I sat down with David and Matt earlier this year to talk about Is It A Fiddle Or A Violin? (more…)
Curb Concerto Competition 2016
Dear interested students, parents, and teachers,
This is an open letter discussing some policy changes (changes to the rules) for the annual Curb Concerto Competition at Schermerhorn Symphony Center this season. Student musicians who are considering auditioning for the competition – which will be held on March 5 & 6, 2016 – are advised to read carefully through these changes, as are their teachers and anyone else involved in helping students prepare for this event.
Click here to access the complete guidelines and calendar regulating the competition posted on the Nashville Symphony website. Please refer to this webpage for many details not discussed in this letter. The purpose of this letter is to draw your attention to changes that have been made for the 2016 competition from the way things have been done in previous years. These changes may affect the preparation of your audition, and how early you make your application.
The Legacy of Guido d’Arezzo
Part 2 in a 4-part series
Go to Part 1: The Joy of Solfège
Solfège is a practical method for teaching sight-singing (singing music from written notation). Each note of the diatonic scale is assigned a solfège syllable. This practice is called solmization.
Walter Bitner 