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Nashville Symphony: Your Community. Your Orchestra.
music director Giancarlo Guerrero speaks about the symphony’s role in the community in Nashville Symphony: Your Community. Your Orchestra.
I’m pleased to be able to share with you the music education advocacy video that was produced by our Communications team and Mogulboys this Spring – it is now publicly available on Youtube (see below). The video has already been viewed by thousands of symphony patrons since the beginning of May, including screenings at the annual Fashion Show on May 5 and before our many movie concerts in the hall during the month of June.
Nashville Symphony: Your Community. Your Orchestra features the symphony’s conductors and musicians both describing our organization’s commitment to music education as well as sharing personal anecdotes about the importance of music education in the life of the community.
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.
Wholehearted Attention
Grannis Photography
Music teachers in school settings often feel a sense of isolation from the activities happening in other classrooms, and a lack of understanding on the part of other teachers and administrators about what it is, exactly, that music teachers teach. There are striking differences in the way teaching and learning happens in the music classroom when compared to the activities happening in other classes. In the current standards-obsessed education climate, appropriate musical activity in the classroom faces real obstacles in being appreciated, understood, and ultimately funded, because it resists being reduced to a checklist of objectives.
Which is not to say that there are not discrete objectives for a music teacher to impart to his or her students – quite the opposite, in fact. Music-making is such a complex activity that the act of separating all the components that go into it into easily assessed bytes of information ultimately leaves out essential aspects of what it is really about, presenting an incomplete picture at best, and at worst, a distorted view of the purpose and value of musical activity.
Sumer Is Icumen In
the earliest known copy of Sumer Is Icumin In; British Library Harley 978 folio 11v
When I was an elementary and middle school music teacher (1991 – 2007), I structured a lot of my curriculum – especially the songs I chose to teach my students – around the seasons. While it may seem like an obvious educational strategy, I think it is important to stress the value of this. Children in our society are living in environments that are increasingly divorced from any sense of connection with the natural world. Part of a music teacher’s mission is to give children not only a developed set of skills but also a generous survey (content) of our musical tradition, and the music literature – especially the song repertoire – includes a wide variety of examples of the use of music to evoke, celebrate, and otherwise honor many aspects of the natural world from which we come – and which we are still a part of, whether we recognize it or not.
Nashville Symphony Formalizes Partnership With NSA
from my Instagram feed: NSA dancers wait for their cue during a performance of Swan Lake with the Nashville Symphony at Schermerhorn, February 11, 2015
This week Nashville Symphony Education staff met with Oceana Sheehan, Assistant Principal of Nashville School of the Arts, and Bob Kucher, Director of Secondary Partnerships and Programs at the PENCIL Foundation, to formalize the partnership between the symphony and the school. It was a relatively simple process and in fact a pleasant one: we filled out some paperwork and discussed our plans for the ongoing collaboration between the two institutions next season.
Although not existing “on paper” until now, the symphony and NSA have in fact had a rich and dynamic partnership for several years now: both institutions collaborate on many events and projects throughout the year that occur both at Schermerhorn and at the school’s campus on Foster Road.
Postscript: A Day at the Hall
March 19, 2015
6:27 am: as I drink my morning tea I check the Newschannel5 website to see if they have posted their story on the Suzuki program yet – Dave told me it was going to air yesterday but I didn’t have the opportunity to see it. It’s there!
School Patrol: Students Learn Suzuki Violin Method
I hastily put together a short postscript to my post from two weeks ago before I get off the couch and prepare for another day at the hall
This is a postscript to A Day at the Hall
The Contestants
They arrive at the hall separately. After checking in at the registration table, they sit at tables in the dimly lit lobby and wait. There is some hushed conversation murmuring amongst the pillars but it is mostly between those that accompanied them; the contestants do not talk to each other.
All are teenagers. The rules specify that contestants must be at least fourteen and no older than eighteen the day of the competition – no regulation regarding school grade levels was made this year, so although most of them are in high school, there are two contestants who are college freshmen, and at least one eighth grader. Of the twenty-one who completed the application and are scheduled to audition, exactly two-thirds are girls. Originally nine boys were scheduled to compete but two withdrew in the past week, one of them bowing out only last night.
Walter Bitner 