Musical Creativity in the Classroom!
Editor’s Note: There are increasing opportu- nities for certified music educators to partner with others. The hope is that artists coming into schools will not be seen as an alternative to regular music instruction with certified music educators. Teaching Artists should never re- place certified music educators in the classroom setting. Rather, they should be included as an additional layer of instruction to supplement the daily work of the regular music educator.
These are stormy, yet exciting times. Across the world, something eventful is happening in Arts Education. Yes, there are the crosscurrents of stress and job loss for teachers that we all know about, and yes, there is such pressure these days to “teach to the test.” But teachers are resilient, caring and creative, and performing artists and composers on their part are beginning to realize just how joyful it is to work with children and their creations.
One of the most promising developments has been the American-bred rise of the “Teaching Artist.” Nurtured by Arts Education special- ist Eric Booth and others, highly trained and first-class instrumentalists, dancers, visual art- ists, and composers have gone into the public schools to partner with local classroom teachers and help children uncover vistas of self-empow- erment and creativity.
My own entry into this colorful world coincided with this trend. Composers of my generation typically kept to themselves and even guarded entry into the field as if we were in a fortress of some sort - or, as the cliché goes - in an ivory tower of privilege. Teaching at the university level, well, perhaps. But working in public schools? With children? Seriously Composing? Unheard-of!
But growing up in a family of visual artists, I’d been long aware of the amazing phenom- enon of children’s art; how it has been valued and even has had a profound influence on the great visual artists of the 20th century. Why not in music? What if we could devise both group
Jon Deak
and individual activities for grade-school kids, help them with notation (while never ‘editing’ what they do!) and above all, value and take se- riously what they create? What if we took their creations as Art and not as sand-box games? Se- rious fun, eh? Well, what IF?
Aided by a grant from Meet-The-Composer Foundation, and support from the New York Philharmonic, I set out in Denver with the Colo- rado Symphony and the Denver Public Schools to test the concept. I’d no natural ability in this area, and it has taken me years, almost two de- cades by now, to even begin to figure out how to bring the implications of this concept to some sort of fruition.
In the classroom, kids improvise in groups, play games, sing, learn basic instruments, and more individually, tap, clap, hum, dance, scribble, paint, and any old way they can, convey to the teaching artist his or her creation in full detail. They play ‘ear fantasy’ games, listen, interact with and compose for professional musicians who come to work with them, they become a team, and in this program, now called the “Very Young Composers,” they work toward a culmi- nating event where an ensemble of professional musicians play a concert entirely of the chil- dren’s own music!
This program, the “VYC,” has been now tried, tested and replicated in dozens of schools across the country, extended into middle school, and is even thriving in seven foreign countries, espe- cially Venezuela, Japan, Finland and England. It is growing by leaps and bounds, and who knows? It may just have a tiny effect on the con- cert repertoire a generation from now.
The trouble with it is, however, that it needs funding, teaching artist
specialists, and pro-
fessional musicians. How can this program be more portable and user-friendly for arts teachers who simply will not have access to any of this?
Enter Cynthia Page-Bogen. Cynthia teaches el- ementary music in Michigan in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. My own contact with Cyn-
30
Composition
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48