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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.
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.
Learn Their Names First
The Name-Learning Stunt®
preparing young singers for a performance, Blue Rock School, 1994
I urge every teacher who works with groups of children to do this. At the beginning of the school year, or whenever you are beginning to work with a group of students you do not know for the first time – or perhaps a group that is a new constellation, some of whom you know and some you do not – take the time to learn all of their names right from the beginning, and make a special effort to do so. It will take some time and effort, but will reap big rewards in the long run and begin your relationship with the students on a sound footing by demonstrating concretely that you care about them.
It occurred to me to write about this yesterday. I was making a “guest appearance” at a summer choral music day camp to work with a group of students I did not know – I was given a 45 minute period in which to bring them some singing activities. Without any consideration at all I planned to begin my work with them with the name-learning stunt (described below) that I developed at the beginning of my career, and which I used invariably whenever I found myself in front of a new group of students. I did this even though it used up several precious minutes of my brief 45 minute window, because I knew that if I did this first, the rest of the class would go so much better.
Education & Community Engagement at the Nashville Symphony: Spring 2016 Review
from my instagram feed: Nashville Symphony Education & Community Engagement staff toast the symphony’s 2016 Grammy win: (l to r) WB, Margie Way-Kiani, Kelley Bell, Kristen Freeman, March 24, 2016
After an unusually cool spring for Nashville, the weather is starting to heat up just in time for our annual “symphony under the stars” parks concerts which begin on Thursday, June 2 at Centennial Park (for the full schedule of Community Concerts click here).
So this is a good place for a brief pause to look back on our activities in the department of Education & Community Engagement at the Nashville Symphony since January. A lot has happened since I posted my review of our fall 2015 activities: it’s been a very busy spring! This post is a summary of what we’ve been up to ~ in many cases I have already written articles about specific programs or events mentioned here: for more details, follow the links:
Side By Side 2016
The Nashville Symphony and Curb Youth Symphony perform the annual Side By Side concert, May 19, 2016, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville
Last night, Thursday, May 19, the Nashville Symphony hosted the annual Side By Side concert with Curb Youth Symphony. With some 150 musicians on stage, I believe this was the largest orchestra I have ever heard on the stage of Laura Turner Hall. Curb Youth Symphony is directed by Carol Nies, and the annual Side By Side event was conducted by Nashville Symphony Associate Conductor Vinay Parameswaran. It included an afternoon and evening of rehearsals on Wednesday – including the traditional pizza party in the break – and Thursday night’s concert.
Homecoming 2016: Thank You, Nashville Children’s Choir
Touring Choir co-director James Wells leads the combined choirs of the Nashville Children’s Choir Program + Alumni, as Program Director Madeline Bridges leads the audience in “Sol-Fa Calypso” at Homecoming 2016, April 30, 2016, First Baptist Church, Nashville
On Saturday, April 30, 2016, the Nashville Children’s Choir Program held their annual spring concert, as they have every year for more than 25 years. This year’s performance was even more touching than previous years’ performances – not only was the concert the culmination of the year’s rehearsals presented by the more than 250 singers in the program’s 4 choirs. In addition, some 80 alumni – including many in their 20s and 30s – joined the choirs for the day to rehearse a very special “Homecoming” program presented that afternoon that included singers who participated in NCC in the past as well as currently enrolled choristers.
Walter Bitner 