Benefit Music

I often play recorders with the Village Pipers in the summer, but with all the packing and getting ready for sabbatical, as well as focusing on fiddle music, I have not had the time this summer. I was happy to hear that they would be performing in Larkin Park last evening, so I hopped on my bike to go hear them.

What I did not fully realize is that they were playing at a benefit for Real Connections, "a member-driven resource network offering trusted information, valued services and enriching relationships that enable individuals to live and age well in their homes and communities. I felt a little like an interloper, but I did not help myself to dinner, and I clapped for all the people who were recognized for their contributions to this endeavor, and no one asked me to leave. So it was all good.

The Pipers played a few of my favorite pieces and made me wonder if I should sneak in my soprano recorder into my luggage next month....

Karol Rinehart

In all the years that I have taught strings in the CUSD, I think I've had 4 or 5 different administrators, and two different acronyms - ASMP (After School Music Program) and the current EIMP (Elementary Instrumental Music Program). We are about to have a new administrator because Karol Rinehart has just retired after 30 years in the school district. She has been a great boss who helped us get things done and supporting us and our students in any way she could.

We celebrated Karol at Casa de Salsa last week with a little party which included teachers from our program providing background music (first a string duo and then a jazz combo). A bagpiper also made an appearance. We will miss Karol, but know that she will enjoy her new retired life in Colorado.

Fiddle Camp

I just returned home from a transformative week at Sierra Fiddle Camp. This post cannot do justice to the amazing time we had, but I will try to cover the highlights.

For about 6 years now, my friend, Lynn, and I have been playing around with Celtic fiddle music. Inspired by the Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser and his cellist partner, Natalie Haas, we have attempted to play tunes. You can listen to samples of their playing on their websites. I knew that we needed a step up in our playing, and Lynn had casually mentioned something about fiddle camp, so I looked it up online, and pretty soon we were registered, paid and ready to go.
            

In a small nutshell, about 200 or so campers of all ages (about 3 and up) descend upon the Shady Creek Outdoor School and Conference Center for 8 days of immersion in not only Scottish fiddle music, but other folk traditions. People bring cellos, mandolins, guitars, keyboards, harps, and even one set of bagpipes. I had three classes every day: Scottish, Swedish and USA music. The cellos (and others) attended these classes, and then we had two more classes. Cellos had their own class and I chose to go to singing. We chose our own level of playing based on how well we could learn music by ear. I chose the Moderate group which ended up being perfect for me.

Alasdair teaching the Moderate Class

To round out our days, we went to a forum to listen to one of our teachers talk about a subject near and dear to them, jammed, had morning yoga (some did Beyonce dancing for their exercise), and evenings were filled with dances, concerts, a talent show and singing.

What did I like the best? Well, I have a hard time choosing, but what comes to mind is that I loved having all the kids there. In the Moderate class we had about 50 people, and perhaps 30 of them were between the ages of 8 and 12. I loved learning the same stuff in the intergenerational setting. The kids impressed me so much with their long attention spans, love of learning music, energy and spirit.  I loved finding out that I am capable of learning music by ear! Being training in the classical tradition is one great way of learning music, but aural learning opens up completely new sections of the brain.

I also loved (loved, loved) singing. Our teacher was Moira Smiley who I heard at the 2013 Claremont Folk Festival with her group VOCO. We sang a Swedish song called Visa fran Jarna which you can hear a sample of here. Also Old Timey songs Leather Britches and Lazy John and another song which I don't know the name of.

Here is a plug for the banjo teacher, Jayme Stone, who has a Kickstarter project to record and bring to life songs from the Alan Lomax recordings. If you love American Roots music, you should at least check out THIS PAGE and watch the video. 

I am sad to say that Lynn and I had to leave the camp on Friday (she had to get back to start teaching at the National Cello Institute today), so we not only missed the Friday afternoon class, but also the big concert on Saturday. Now that I know people are leaving camp, I am less jealous, but also a bit sad that it's all over anyway.

We met some great people, made some new friends who I am sure we will see again since we definitely plan to return to fiddle camp in the future.

Moira Smiley leading us in singing

Yoga by the pool in the morning before breakfast with a little music

Fiddles waiting around while campers ate lunch

Multicultural Day 2014

Another Multicultural Day has come and gone at Vista. As I have blogged before, my favorite part of the day is when the whole school gathers at the end with all our flags and we sing three songs together. This year we threw in Pete Seeger's If I Had a Hammer. The Kinders made up motions to go with the song and everyone sang it with such gusto.

It occurred to me that we should incorporate singing into other assemblies for the whole school, not just for Winter Sing and MC Day. I will be thinking about what songs those should be and when we can sing together when I come back.

I loved these photos of the kids in Room 4 - looking all Italian!

A Day of Music - Claremont Folk Festival

Ya know, I love chocolate cake. But eating an entire cake in one sitting would be too much. Yesterday I almost had too much music. Not quite, but almost. The Claremont Folk Festival, for its 31st year, treated young and old to a day filled with music. You can see more about this festival from my last year's post. The biggest difference, for me, this year is that more of my friends went, so I decided to stay all day.

Then I realized that the Claremont Youth Symphony was having their concert down at Little Bridges, so I took a break at 3:00 from the Folk Festival and went into the nice air-conditioning to hear a handful of my students perform. At the end of the concert, I was pretty tired, so I went home for an hour to relax, eat and put my feet up before heading back to the Festival. (More chocolate cake!)

The highlight of the day was Ben Harper's band performing with his mom, Ellen. It was pretty dark by the time they started, but we had managed to eek out a little space next to a palm tree and made ourselves comfortable on the ground with towels and the tree for leaning upon.

The sweet part of Ben's performance was when he picked up a young boy, maybe 4 or 5 years old, and together they sang Neil Young's Heart of Gold. I caught a little of it on video. Here it is.

Here is Lucas Critchfield conducting the CYSO

Here are a few of the performers at the Festival - Angela Lloyd, Peter Harper and Rick Shea

Annual Vista Orchestra and Recorders Concert

Last night I finished up my music year at Vista with our annual Vista Orchestra and Recorders Concert. Our principal asked if this was our second such concert, and I said no, that we had been doing this for many years.

That made me wonder, "How many years?"

I know that we've had a Vista Orchestra since 2003, and I'm not quite sure when I started teaching recorders, but I'm thinking it was 2005. That was before I started blogging. Here is a link to what I think is my first blog post about an Orchestra/Recorders concert in 2009.

What was interesting and different about this particular concert:

1) I dropped one piece and added a different one at the last minute (never done that before!)

2) The recorder students played a song they made up to go with a story

3) Recorders and Orchestra played the Vista Ostinato, a piece composed by the string students

The CUSD EIMP (Elementary Instrumental Music Program) still has another week or so of classes, so I still have a reason to stay out of trouble.....

Looking forward to Monday

It's the kind of weekend that makes me glad that I can start the work week again tomorrow. Not that it wasn't a fun weekend, but I'm really tired.

Saturday: 8 hours involved in a board meeting. 90 minutes driving to Palm Desert, 90 minutes driving home, the rest in a meeting. The meeting was fine, and lunch was included, and I enjoy the company of the people on the board, but that much driving and that much meeting in one day almost did me in.

More Saturday: Played in a concert. This always takes more energy than one would suppose. It appears as though we are sitting on stage for 90 minutes, and we are. But we are thinking, thinking, and concentrating very hard. Oh, and moving our arms around a lot.

Sunday: Choir rehearsal, church, repeat the concert. Cleaned parts of the house that needed it the most. Yes, Monday should bring a calmer order to my day.

Orfeo

Not my favorite book.

This book is supposed to be derived from the Orpheus myth. I didn't see it, unless it's as simple as Orpheus being a musician, as the main character of this one is. Reviewers have remarked that Powers writes from his head, but not his heart, and I would have to agree with that in this novel.

Mostly I had a hard time with descriptions of music since I think that music is its own language with different truths. Here is just one clunky example from the novel trying to describe music. "The piece was simplicity itself: a triplet-driven, Phrygian figure in the high voices, while beneath, arpeggios moved in contrary motion, in wide slow waves. Each new entry took the evolving figure into higher registers. The blend strained toward something archaic, a folk tune an ethnographer might find in a remote mountain village of a failing monarchy, to bring back to his studio in the decadent capital and flesh out with volunteer harmonies."

I have no idea what that means. I mean, I understand what triplets, Phrygian, waves, etc. mean, but it doesn't tell me about the music. Especially since the paragraph starts out saying that the music was simplicity itself. The description doesn't sound like the music is simple.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that my biologist daughter would not approve of the science writing, either.

Inland Valley Music Together

My dear friend teaches Music Together classes - for "children and the grown-ups who love them." This week she has lost her voice and asked me to come in and help her sing with this morning's class. Cute kids and music? How could I say no? Although she thought I was doing her a favor, I was actually learning and observing and thinking about more ways of teaching music to children, but mostly I was having fun. You can see her page here.

Kangaroos activity

This week in first and second grade music, we had a fun activity relating to the Kangaroo music from Saint Saens' Carnival of the Animals. We made our first two fingers into kangaroo ears and hopped them up and down our other arm to the music. Then we looked at a visualization of the music on the board which consisted of dots and wavy lines. We made our own sounds as we traced the patterns in the air. We "painted" in the air with our fingers. Then we opened up each piece of felt (one per student) and saw the dot stickers and piece of yarn. Each student created their own music. We practiced following the dots and lines while we made our own corresponding sounds. Some students chose to share theirs with the class. It was awesome, and every kid (every kid! was engaged).

I must credit Sandy Stauffer, who taught us that at a recent workshop.

As you can see from the photo in the lower right side, the music rug is still going strong! Every day I am so happy to have that rug in the music room.

J Brown, Violinmaker

I just ran across this little 5-minute documentary featuring Claremont's own violin maker, Jim Brown. If you don't know exactly where his shop is located, I describe it in two ways. The first is to say that it is sort of in the alleyway behind Video Paradiso. If you stand in that parking lot and look down the alley, you'll see it right there. Second, if you are driving up Indian Hill, turn into the driveway for the cleaners that has the big white columns just south of Bonita on the east side, and it's the building past the cleaners.

I send all my students to the Brown's for rentals, supplies and a chance to pet the dog and cat. Or are there two cats? 

Chronicles: Volume One

Picked this book up at a rummage sale and finally finished it. That's how it goes with books you own. They get pushed back in favor of the books that have a due date.

You wouldn't expect a typical memoir from Bob Dylan, and you don't get one. Not one in chronological order. Not one with clear dates or even names (what was his wife's name, I wonder?). Although there is plenty of name-dropping. The beginning seemed to me to be a slog-fest of "then I played here, and I talked to these people, and I went there," etc. That's probably the real reason it took so long to finish.

Once I picked it back up, I got interested in the middle where Dylan actually talks about how some of his songs came into existence. As you might think, no song comes about in the same way. Sometimes the songs you don't think much about are the ones that touch a chord with your audience.

One thing that I particularly admire about Dylan are his lyrics. I seem to be able to write prose, maybe a little poetry, but I feel completely stymied when it comes to lyrics. However, my favorite thing that I ever composed had lyrics which I had to borrow from poets. All of Dylan's songs seem to come from lyrics first, which makes great sense to me.

Musical Gift

This week a former Vista student from many years ago (before I ever lived in Claremont) donated some musical instruments to the school. I was not there when she came by, so I have no idea who she is, but I am very grateful to have these for the music room.

#TBT

It's trendy now to post an old photo on social media on Thursdays. It's called Throw-Back Thursday. I enjoy seeing older photos of friends, trying to imagine what the stories are behind the photos. Since the Claremont USD had our Elementary Strings Concert last night, I thought it would be appropriate to show a photo of the El Roble Orchestra from the 1990s. (The ER Orchestra always plays at the end of the elementary concert so that students can see where they will be playing in a year or two and to get inspired by the older kids.) Back then, Gary Iida was the conductor of the orchestra. He was a much beloved teacher at both CHS and El Roble, and we miss him in the community very much.

Wordless News

I heard about the site Wordless News on NPR earlier this month, and I occasionally look at the sight. The artist gets up early in the morning and listens to NPR and choses a story to illustrate. She'll work on the image from about 5:00-10:00 a.m., then post the image  on her blog before she gets on with the work she does for her graphic art clients. I particularly enjoyed this one honoring Pete Seeger.

Afternoon Project

My project this afternoon was to assemble sets of flashcards for my beginning string students. My friend and cohort made the templates, then I photocopied them onto card stock, then cut them up, grouped them, punched holes in the corners and put each group on its own ring.

This year, this was more of a deal than last because I have 18 beginners - 12 violins, 4 violas, 2 cellos. I told them that when they pass their Twinkle test next week, they will get a set of flashcards. They seemed very excited about that.

Alle Meine Kleider

During our family time on Christmas, my daughters reminded me of a German song that I had forgotten. They must have learned it from the children's choir director at church when they were in elementary school.


Grün grün grün sind alle meine Kleider,
Grün grün grün ist alles was ich hab
Darum lieb ich alles was so grün ist
Weil mein Schatz ein Jager, Jager ist.

It basically means, all my clothes are green because my love is a hunter.

You can go through other colors then. Blue for sailor, white for baker, black for chimney sweep, and then all the colors for a painter.

I found this funny video on youtube so you can hear the song. 

Inside Llewyn Davis

When my daughter L was young, and I thought she was old enough to have me read The Phantom Tollbooth aloud to her, she looked up at me somewhere in the middle of the book and said, "I don't really understand this book, but I really like it!" Well, I probably should have waited about 2 or 3 years to choose that particular book, and I hope that someday she gets around to reading it to herself, because she will understand it now, for sure.

I am waiting for C and B to come over soon for some football viewing so that we can discuss Inside Llewyn Davis, the latest Coen Brothers film. H and I walked out of the Laemmle yesterday and said, "We really liked that film. What did it mean?"I don't know if waiting 2 or 3 years will help me understand it, but others' insights might.

Of course, we had to look up reviews online and in the LA Times hard copy. The Times talked about the music of the movie (which I really, really liked, especially since the lead character played by Oscar Isaac not only acted well, but sang and played the guitar for reals. [sic] Then I asked H what he thought about the meaning of the cat (We had had a discussion about the meaning of the cat at the last episode of the Sopranos….), 'cause that cat wove it's way throughout the movie. I came across this article in the Atlantic (and it has spoilers, so you are warned). I thought it had some great observations and might be on to something.

In any case, I plan to see this movie again at some point. I'm glad I saw it in the theater first, though.

Winter Sing!

I have a new attitude about Vista's Winter Sing. I have always just dreamed about the moment that it is over and I can start my vacation. This year I found myself looking forward to the actual event. I think I am finally remembering that we are not having dress rehearsals (the very worst part of the whole thing), and that for the past few years when it was over I thought, "that wasn't so bad."

This year I felt excited about all the pieces the kids were going to perform. We had two audience sing-a-longs (I'm not sure how much the audience participated in Feliz Navidad and Winter Wonderland, but I know the kids enjoyed the songs). I had 18 beginning strings perform along with the Vista Orchestra, our (now) traditional Jingle Bells. I loved the Ks in Gingerbread Cookies and the 1st graders were adorable in I Want to Be an Elf. I was amazed at the beauty of the 2nd graders singing Simple Gifts - so clear, loud and on pitch. You would think that I would know they could sing that way, but, really, they ratcheted it up two notches for the performance.

I also learned that for the 5th and 6th graders, who do not like to sing in public, having them lead the group singing for Winter Wonderland and then do a body percussion with a rap about wrapping Christmas Presents was a fine option. I totally stole the choreography for the final number (4th and 5th graders) from this youtube video which the kids LOVED rehearsing. If more of the kids had actually shown up for the performance, it would have been better, but, for those of us there, it was really fun.

Recorders, were, as usual great, even though this is the smallest class - about 22 kids total - but they just rocked their pieces.

The kids were just amazingly good and so happy to be there, and I enjoyed watching them be their very best.

I have also come to appreciate, more and more, how easy my job on the actual night is. The teachers are there to keep track of their classes. They set up and clean up, and they make the kids look great. Special thanks to my fabulous husband who helped move risers and chairs and stands, and then got out the vacuum at the end and stayed to turn out the last light.

Beethoven's 9th

This is the order of wonderfulness:

1) Listening to a recording of Beethoven's 9th - pretty good

2) Listening to a live performance of Beethoven's 9th - excellent

3) Performing Beethoven's 9th - Beyond excellent

4) Sitting in the viola section, surrounded by over 200 people making glorious Beethoven music -

Bliss