The
following is a summary of a proposal to provide elementary school students
the opportunity to interact with professional musicians, hear quality
performances of chamber music, and explore how the phenomenon of sound
can stimulate creativity.
To individual schools we offer
direct support for the music curriculum as specified by the Ontario Ministry
of Education. For example, our program for the primary grades will address
pitch, rhythm, beat, tempo, dynamics and form, and will include some singing
by the students. We also involve the students in the creative process
through having them conduct the group and make compositional decisions
involving simple arrangements of children's songs. They have the opportunity
to see how the instruments "work" and to hear music from several
historic eras since our repertoire includes music from the Renaissance
to the modern period. As can be seen from the attached sample programs,
we encourage the children to describe their responses to music, to communicate
their thoughts and feelings about music, and to recognize that mood can
be created through music.
This proposal is being put forward
by the Kingston Symphony Brass Quintet in partnership with the Kingston
Symphony Association, and the Ontario Ministry of Education.
WHO WE ARE AND WHY WE ARE SPECIAL
The Kingston Symphony Brass consists
of five professional musicians who perform on several trumpets, both modern
and historical, French horn, trombone, bass trombone, and tuba. Three
of us are experienced classroom teachers, another has been a long-time
band director, and the fifth member has a great deal of experience in
post-secondary education. In other words, we have all been working with
students for many years. This background provides us with the ability
to go beyond being simply a visiting musical group, useful as this has
been in schools over the years. We wish to directly serve your curriculum
needs; a primary objective of our approach is to help classroom teachers
deliver curriculum.
OBJECTIVES
Through playing for and working
with children at particular division levels and through the kind of assistance
we can provide for their teachers, our approach will serve the needs of
the Ontario Music Curriculum as detailed under 'Specific Expectations.'
Our programs address 'Knowledge of Elements, Creative Work, and Critical
Thinking.' For example, when we speak of pitch identification or musical
dynamics in the primary division, or explore syncopation and meter in
the intermediate division, our primary objective will always be to underline
and enhance 'Knowledge of Elements.'
IMPLEMENTATION
Our approach is such that, rather
than "buying a concert" from us, you are entering into a contract
with us. Ideally, although we recognize that this may not be possible
for many schools, the Kingston Symphony Brass would come to your school
more than once during the school year, perhaps once during each of the
three terms. We have a variety of programs, each of which focus on particular
concepts. For instance, rhythm, or form, or historical styles, or compositional
decisions. We can also present more general programs. The point of our
"contract idea" is that we wish to think of serving a school
over a period of time, be that yearly or more frequently.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
As we all know, school conditions
as well as audiences have changed considerably in the last 20 or so years.
While some form of "educational outreach" programming has been
available for many years, a growing number of music ensembles are now
offering their area schools comprehensive arts programs that not only
enhance existing school music programs but also use music and the arts
as a vehicle to help teach subjects such as language, creative writing,
mathematics, world cultures and science.
GOALS
The purpose of our projected
in-school program is to actively involve the student in the musical experience
and to use this involvement as a means of encouraging the child to think
and speak creatively. We hope to demonstrate that a program of this type
will benefit a child's general learning ability. There now exists a considerable
body of evidence to support the belief that integration of the arts within
a curriculum is important to interdisciplinary and critical thinking,
self-confidence, motivation, co-operation, communication, and creativity.
SOME FURTHER DETAILS
OF THIS PROPOSAL
We offer musical presentations
by a chamber ensemble that involves dialogue. That is, we talk with an
audience rather than at them; leading them to discover and verbalize an
insight into music. The result is the creative verbal expression of the
child. (And the way to evaluate such a program is not by what the musicians
say, but by what the children say).
The dialogue technique that we
use is comprised of three basic areas of musical participation by the
audience:
- Taste... The audience is
asked, "What did you think or feel?" (It is not important
how a piece of music makes us as performers feel; it is important how
the piece makes the child feel, what emotions or moods are evoked and
how the student can verbalize a response).
- Creative Decisions... Children
are asked to help make some of the decisions which performers or composers
must make. (Decisions regarding such performance parameters as tempo,
volume, articulation and style, as well as compositional decisions such
as orchestration are used as a method of leading a child to discover
an insight into music).
- Analysis... Audience is asked,
"What did you hear?" (We present the child with a musical
experience and then ask him/her to tell us what happened. Even the most
unresponsive audience can be led to verbalize the number of instruments
which played, whether the music was loud or soft, fast or slow. Note
that a child's ability to listen intelligently and to analyze what he/she
has heard has nothing whatsoever to do with the child's grades in remedial
reading or arithmetic).
GROWTH POTENTIAL
If this proposal is successful
in the elementary schools in the Kingston area, we would hope to expand
it to a wider Eastern Ontario region.
We also think that high schools
will welcome the dialogue approach, especially when accompanied by a workshop
which deals with performance techniques involving individual students
and the instruments they are learning.
We
have received an Artist in Education grant from the Ontario Arts Council
for the school year 2006-2007. This will allow us to do presentations
and performances in 16 schools this year