5th Grade Music Trip

Upcoming 4th Grade Program!!

6th Grade Program sure did rock & roll!!

6th grade's program was a SMASH hit with audiences this Wednesday! We traveled back to the '50s to an on-air TV show-At the Bandstand! Students loved getting to dress up (look how good they look!) and singing old favorite songs from the poodle-skirt decade. Due to popular demand, they will be performing it again for the entire school on Oct. 30th at 10 am :) I even heard some of the kids say they wish they lived in the 1950s!

October's Composer of the Month

 This month's composer is one of my all-time favorite composers! Eric Whitacre is a world-wide phenomenon and Grammy-winning American composer. He has written 100+ works and is one of the most popular composers alive. He is best known for his choral works, but he writes both choral and instrumental music. Whitacre is known for combining odd blends of notes to create cluster chords and dividing the ensemble into as many as 33 parts at one time! He is a great example of working hard to accomplish great things-he entered college not knowing how to read music and when he graduated he was accepted into Julliard (one of the most prestigious music schools in the world) for his masters degree! Whitacre has also embraced modern technology and is the only composer to put together a "virtual choir." Ask your child what that means :) The last one consisted of over 8000 videos from singers in 101 different countries!

 

 

 

In college, we skyped Eric Whitacre!

Cloudburst

 

October

Bonus Video: October arranged for choir-Alleluia

 Water Night with the Virtual Choir

Upcoming 6th Grade Prorgram!

September's Composer of the Month

 If you've ever seen the movies Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Father of the Bride, Forrest Gump, Parent Trap, Back to the Future trilogy, Stuart Little, Lilo and Stitch, Polar Express, Night at the Museum, Captain America, The Avengers, or the Croods (and 100 more!) then you've heard the brilliant film music of Alan Silvestri! Behind every good movie, there is an even better music score. We talked a lot this month about if movie music is done well, you don't even notice it's there. It's job is not to be distracting, but instead help to further the storyline, emotion, and mood of the scene. Silvestri does just that and so much more. Ask your kid about their new vocab words-solo, genre, and vibrato!

Each week we studied a new piece Silvestri composed:

Main Theme from Back to the Future

 Forrest Gump Suite

 Believe from Polar Express