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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.
The Joy of Solfège
Part 1 in a 4-part series
Most of the country is still enjoying summer vacation, but here in Nashville the school year begins the first week of August – no lie. This will be the first fall in many years that I am not starting a new school year as a teacher, although I am still vicariously experiencing it as a parent. Forgive me if I wax nostalgic.
For all of my teaching career – save for 2008 – 2011 when I ran the piano studio at Nashville School of the Arts and simultaneously directed Music City Youth Orchestra – I was in some part, often for the most part, a singing teacher. And so it is natural for my thoughts to turn, at this time of year, to the wonders of solfège. For so many years, the use of this invaluable tool, the practice of this incomparable method was a staple of my daily life. How many thousands of hours have I spent solfèging songs or vocal parts, or teaching students to do so, or doing it with them? How could I have done my work without it? Oh thou noble art. (more…)
Registration for 2015-16 Education Programming Opens July 27
Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero works with a student during Side-by-Side Concert rehearsals, May 20, 2015
Registration for many of the Nashville Symphony’s education programs for the 2015-2016 season will open on Monday, July 27 at 11 a.m.
SHAME Education Poised to Infiltrate U.S. Schools
In the wake of the recent news that the U.S. Senate has passed the Every Child Achieves Act, proponents of SHAME Education in our schools are taking a more vocal stand about the controversial new approach to K – 12 education. “The inclusion of music and arts education as acknowledged core subjects is a big step towards SHAME for everyone!” said one teacher.
Flying in the face of the contemporary wisdom that the purpose of education is to prepare students to join the workforce in hip, uptempo careers where they have more opportunities to consume technology, proponents of SHAME advocate a radical approach to education that seeks to introduce children to a wide survey of human endeavor across many fields during their school years. Supporters of SHAME contend this “well-rounded” education will better prepare them to function as adults in a swiftly-changing society than the popular STEM curriculum so many of our schools have spent the last decade or more converting to.
Trust
This article is a companion to my previous post Wholehearted Attention.
from my Instagram feed: Nashville Symphony Education & Community Engagement Program Manager Kelley Bell guides a young guest in playing his first notes on the trumpet before our Community Concert at Centennial Park, Nashville, June 4, 2015
It’s generally accepted that one of the goals of education – beyond the attainment of specific content objectives – is to instill in the child a love for learning. It has been my experience however, that a love for learning is part of a child’s natural state and does not need to be instilled. Children who exhibit behavior to the contrary have most often faced social and/or emotional difficulties that impede their inherent wish to learn and grow; some of a teacher’s work involves trying to determine what these obstacles are and finding ways around them. Beyond providing the child an acquaintance with and proficiency in the broad array of subjects necessary for success in life, the overarching goal of education might be better described as enabling the child to become her own teacher.
Walter Bitner 