This residency had a woodwind quintet (Lara Stiles Brinson-flute, Lydia Pitts-oboe, Chris Carr-clarinet, Patrick Hydo-french horn, Stephanie Koher-bassoon) working with a composer (Jason Pellett). The goal was to have the children make musical decisions and show musical creativity in helping Jason compose a piece for the woodwind quintet. This was to be done in a way that related to their study of the water cycle and states of water.
The first visit was used to show how music can be used to represent other things. Jason transcribed a section of Debussy's La Mer (The Sea) for the quintet and had the students listen for how Debussy made his piece sound like the sea. The students were then asked to come up with different ways they see water (river, sewer, rain, cloud, ice, etc.) and have different members of the quintet try to play something to represent what they chose. The students chose which instruments would play and guided the players in how to approach their playing with a list of adjectives that we provided (smooth, choppy, fast, etc.). They were able to experiment to see which instruments and what kinds of melodies worked best for whatever they were trying to depict.
The second visit started with a review of what was covered in the first visit. Jason asked the students what a composer might do to write about an elephant. After getting some ideas from the students, the quintet played a transcription of Saint-Saens' L'Elephant and the students were asked to listen and see if Saint-Saens used any of the ideas that they suggested. L'Elephant was used to introduce the next concept, which is notating music with a drawing. As Stephanie played the theme to L'Elephant, Chris demonstrated by drawing a picture on the board representing the melody. After the students had an idea of how this worked they were split up into three groups, one for each state of water. Each group was to compose a theme for their state of water and notate by drawing it. To make sure that they were actually thinking musically instead of just drawing they had to sing their melodies before notating them. It was then up to Jason to turn their drawings into notation that the quintet could play.
To prepare for the third visit, Jason notated the drawings and added accompaniment, and during the visit the students chose which instruments would play which parts and what order the parts would appear in the completed piece. You can hear Jason's interpretation of the drawings (with the instrumentation that the students chose) and hear how they sounded with accompaniment (also with instrumentation by the students). The clips of the melodies by themselves are computer generated, but the clips with accompaniment are played by the woodwind quintet, and on some of them the students are also singing. |
