iListenWI Listening Strengthens the Warp and Woof


in Your Music Program’s Material Jackie Vandenberg, State Co-Chair, iListenWI


Listening is funda- mental to all that we do in the music classroom. The stu- dent, the teacher, the performer, the audience member all rely on listening to learn, appreciate, share and strengthen skills.


A piece of cloth is woven with thread or yarn going in two directions. The warp is the lengthwise thread while the woof, or weft, is the transverse thread. The warp traditionally was stretched very tightly on a loom with the woof created by threading a shuttle through the alternately raised warps, first by hand, and then later by machines.


How are these paragraphs tied together? And how does it relate to our theme for this magazine at the start of another school year?


iListenWI, formerly known as The Lis- tening Project, is dedicated to helping teachers take the fiber of learning they so carefully weave in their classrooms, and strengthening it lengthwise while con- tinuing to add new woof, or weft, threads across that learning with new pieces of music or fresh takes on well-loved ones.


Whether you teach students for multiple years or interact with them on a semester or quarterly basis, listening plays a huge role in favorable outcomes for your musi- cians. Whether you teach elementary gen- eral music or in a more mature ensemble setting, you can weave a stronger founda- tion of musical experience with listening, despite having short or limited amounts of time like many of us do, currently.


Theme: Animals “…listening plays a huge


role in favorable outcomes for your musicians.”


Evelyn Glennie


In her Ted Talk of a few years ago, percus- sionist Evelyn Glennie shared, “Of course, my job is all about listening, and my aim, really, is to teach the world to listen. That’s my only real aim in life. And it sounds quite simple, but actually it’s quite a big, big job.” This extraordinary human, who lost nearly all of her hearing by age 12, has dedicated her life to teaching others to listen! If you have not experienced this phenomenal speaker and performer and her fresh, clever way of seeing and listen- ing, please take the time to view this talk at https://youtu.be/IU3V6zNER4g.


Evelyn Glennie has turned the challenges she may have faced in her own life into challenging everyone else to rethink their notions of listening and sound. She is the epitome of strength of character to the very fiber of her being.


She asks the listener where music comes from: Is it “more than simply a translation from score to instrument to audience?” Of course, as musicians we would answer “yes,” understanding that so much more turns notes on a page into music. But if our students do not have the opportunity to experience many styles, eras, timbres, pieces, performers (and thus, interpreta- tions), how will they develop that intrinsic musical strength that will serve them for- ever? Analyzing, comparing, contrasting, listening, discussing and re-listening are all part of those pieces of critical thinking that lead our students to becoming inde- pendent musicians.


18


This year iListenWI offers teachers outcome-based lesson plans, strategies, assessments and a variety of other applica- tions for 11 pieces of musical repertoire for students. We are continuing to base our repertoire lists around a central theme, and while we had, at one time, cycled through six different themes, we will now choose a new theme each year. This year we begin with “Animals!”


Consider how many ways you might incorporate musical listening into this theme! Some of the pieces included this year are: “The Lark” (Joseph Haydn), “The Trout” (Franz Schubert), “Afternoon of a Faun” (Claude Debussy), “Hotaru Koi” (The Firefly/Japanese Children’s Song), “Snoopy Does the Samba” (Ellen Taaffe Zwilich), and featured musical this year is Cats (Andrew Lloyd Webber), which is being revived next season on Broadway. The full repertoire list can be seen online at the website listed below. There are a wide variety of pieces, styles, forms, and instrumentation along with outcomes, strategies for teaching and assessments to use with each piece.


Let’s Dance!


For example, while learning about “Snoopy Does the Samba,” written by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, you might choose to teach students the basic Samba step, which works like this:


Feet together, rock the right knee forward as you step with the right slightly forward (raise the heel) and back again on the left foot. Rock the right knee to the right with heel raised and step fully onto the right foot again. The counts for this are “1 and 2 and.” Repeat on the left side.


When it is working easily, roll the cor- responding hip with the foot being used.


September 2016


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