A Visit from The Dallas Opera

On Tuesday, 4th and 5th grade students were treated to a performance of Donizetti's Elixir of Love by the Dallas Opera. The plot is a classic love triangle: Adina is a wealthy landowner who is the desire of 2 different men. Nemorino, a poor famer, genuinely cares for Adina but doesn't feel he can ever get her attention. Belcore, an overly confident Army sergeant, is looking for a lady and proposes to Adina only 5 minutes after meeting her! Fearing he may lose any chance he has, Nemorino purchases a love potion from Dr. Dulcamara. Little does he know how this potion will affect him, Nemorino quickly drinks it and hopes that it will cause Adina to love him. Adina originally chooses Belcore, but after finding out the lengths Nemorino went to for her affection, she realizes his true intention and agrees to be with Nemorino.

To prepare for this performance, students studied the plot, characters and discussed who they would choose if they were Adina. They even developed ways to infer more information about the plot by noticing body language, facial expressions, and props. Luckily our performance was in English but sometimes you need more than just the lyrics to help understand a performance.

Here's a few highlights of the performance:

Dr. Dulcamara comes to town peddling his potions.

Here Nemorino...the Elixir of Love...it will give you what you need!

Finally Nemorino and Adina are together, but Belcore doesn't seem happy with the Dr!

If you are interested in seeing the performance again, the Dallas Opera has two more performances on Saturday, January 31 and again on Saturday, March 22. Tickets are $5.00 each and can be purchased online at dallasopera.org/family. 

For even more opera, check out the simulcast of La Boheme at Cowboys Stadium on March 21. This is a completely free event and you can even sign up for a student workshop before the performance to learn more about the plot and characters, just like we did for Elixir of Love. More information can be found at http://dallasopera.org/simulcast/

Carnival Time

Over the last four weeks, first grade students have been exploring musical elements such as pitch, dynamics, and tempo with Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals. It is a 14 movement work, but we highlighted 7 movements to explore further. Each day we started off with a short excerpt from Barrie C. Turner's book that helped guide our ears toward the day's movement selections.

Each lesson we focused on a different musical element, beginning with a steady beat led by our puppet Roger, the Royal Lion. Now, Roger loves to dance but he only knows 3 moves: march a steady beat, roar on a glissando, and nod proudly on accented notes. 

For tempo, we met Pokey the Turtle to explain a slow tempo and lead us through mirror movement dances. Students followed Pokey's lead and then buddied up to lead each other through an improvised turtle dance. Be careful to not go too fast...you want Pokey to be able to dance too!

To contrast Pokey's slow movement, we met Jack the Mule. Mules aren't fast, you say? Well, Mr. Saint-Saens loved to play jokes and his carnival is one big joke! That's why the mules are fast. 

Story carpet time with Jack :)

For pitch, we met Ellie the Elephant and found out that she, like Pokey and Roger, loves to dance! Ellie dances a waltz with the double bass. A waltz is a dance in a meter of 3 so students learned how to conduct a meter of three and took turns wearing the elephant conductor hat to lead their class in a body percussion pattern of 3 (pat-clap-clap). 

Exploring a low pitch (double bass) with the Elephants! 

For our last element, we talked about texture. Does the music feel bumpy? Smooth? Gentle? Slimy? We chose the Kangaroos and Swan to represent bouncy and smooth textures, respectively. As you listen to the Kangaroos, you can hear them pause and look around for a new place to hop. These pauses gave us a fun opportunity to try out some directional movement and hop like kangaroos to different places around the room. Be careful to pause and look around when you hear the kangaroos do the same though!

The swans glide so gracefully across the water. We created our own ribbon dances to imitate their graceful movements and fill the room with beautiful colors. 

As a finale to all this fun, back in 1976 the San Fransisco Symphony teamed up with Warner Bros. and the Looney Tunes gang to have Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck present their own take of Mr. Saint-Saens Carnival of the Animals. The whole production can be found in 3 parts on YouTube. 

(A HUGE shoutout to Sara Bibee for her tremendous guided unit! https://www.facebook.com/SaraBibeeMusic )

Recorder Exploration

At the tail end of the fall semester 4th grade kicked off their recorder study and got to know B, A, and G. 5th grade jumped back in with a review of Low E and Low D. Fast forward a few weeks of break (with hopefully a lot of at-home practice!), and we join back together to keep exploring! I have my students work on two different types of repertoire: practice songs, and belt tests.
          
Back during my first year of teaching, another teacher introduced me to Recorder Repast (published by Sweet Pipes). This collection of songs is a wonderful resource for selecting our practice songs. We spend about 10-15 minutes dissecting the music and identifying parts to watch out for. This past week, I shared the biggest secret of analyzing music with my 5th graders - look for patterns! If you can identify parts that repeat, the amount you need to actually learn is a lot less daunting. (Thanks to my percussion professor, Dr. Rick Dimond for pointing that out my freshman year!)

Here's one of my 5th graders labeling repeating patterns in Juba (working on High D).

We may go a little bit overboard with analyzing, but I'd rather point out anything that could trip someone up and leave them a whole menu of options for their own markings. I always tell the students that any music they get is their own copy and to make notes on it as they need to help be a successful performer.

After analyzing, I try to give students about 20 minutes to work through the song on their own and then get in small groups of about 6-8. During the final 10 minutes of class, we take turns performing as a group for each other and then the "audience groups" give 3 comments about the performance. By performing the practice songs in small groups, this helps students work through any performance anxiety before they have to perform their belt tests as a solo.

Small group performance #1

Have stage fright? Just turn your back to the audience!

Since I've mentioned "belt tests", here's what I mean: after students and I work through their practice repertoire, they are responsible for assimilating the knowledge they've learned so far. They receive a song from the Recorder Karate book and independently analyze it just like we did for their practice songs. Students choose to either work alone or with a buddy to figure out their test song and then perform it as a solo for me. Once they pass the test, they receive a colored piece of yarn to tie around the foot joint of the recorder as their "karate belt". 

After they complete all 9 belts, they are a RECORDER KARATE MASTER!

Percussion Ensemble

Ahhh...January! A fresh start to the new year and all rested up ready to dive into new experiences with the students. Well, not quite *all* rested...

This year saw the formation of a select performance group of 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students chosen to participate in Percussion Ensemble. I am so excited to spend my Friday afternoons with this group of talented students and share my passion for percussion! It has been a long 5 years since I was involved with any sort of percussion performance and now I have the opportunity to open this world to my own students.

We had our first performance on December 16th and they did absolutely fantastic! They performed 3 selections as a large group and four of the members were featured on Carol of the Bells. They only had about 9 rehearsals beforehand and a huge learning curve, but performed like young professionals. I heard nothing but rave reviews from the concert audience!

Now that we've started off the new semester, we've added 3 new members to our group and have dove right into our spring concert selections. The students musical maturity has definitely grown through the year and they are eagerly figuring our their new parts and exploring new instruments such as gankogui, goat hoof rattles, and other ethnic sounds. 

Think they're excited for the new songs???

Here's a sneak peak at what it takes to put this all together...

Creating their own choreography...

Working in sectionals...

and of course, lots of fun!