Klarinet Archive - Posting 000277.txt from 2001/06

From: Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: question [and School Board]
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 09:59:56 -0400

Roger, this post turned out to be longer than I had planned, but I hope
that especially the young man who began this thread with a question
about leading an ensemble and abot controlling it will read this entire
post.

<><> Roger Garrett wrote:
Undoubtedly, they played well and with enthusiasm - and that's a great
thing.

There's some personal stuff involved here that I can't announce
publicly because it would be an invasion of my daughter's privacy, but I
cannot begin to convey HOW GREAT it was for e personally.

<><> For example, The Disney and Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes may have
given the percussionists a little more to do (or maybe not, depending on
the arrangements)

I didn't post a complete description of the evening. I hate being
forced to watch home movies, and so I'm not going to do it to the folks
on this list. But the evening was shared by a classical ensemble, a
jazz ensemble, and the school chorus. Thus no child performed
everything in the program that I described.

It happens that the Webber medley belonged to the 'a capella'
chorus and didn't include percussion.

One of the soloists in the Webber medley just knocked me off my
feet (out of my chair) --- clear, full, golden rich voice, absolutely on
pitch, no overdone vibrato, perfectly on the beat, flawless diction, she
filled the auditorium with zero strain in her voice. She outsang (by a
small margin, but she did it) most professional tour performers that
have visited this town; and yet when she wasn't singing solo, she
blended with all the other children the way a good musician should and
you could not pick her voice out of the crowd.
What really surprised me about her was that she played trumpet in
both the classical ensemble and the jazz ensemble. Singing seems (to
me) to require an open mouth that is completely alien to buzzing and a
brass embouchure. A woodwind wouldn't have surprised me so much.
I've memorized her name because the odds are that I will hear her
somewhere else in a few years.
One of the positive aspects of the concert was that, afterwards, I
was chatting with my daughter and two other children. I mentioned my
admiration of the soloist, and all three of them repled (each in his or
her own way), "She's really great, we love to sing with her." The
children did not say, "I wish I had her voice" or "Yeh, she's better
than the rest of us".

<><> What grade level, size, and general instrumentation is this
teacher working with?

I don't know what those grade numbers mean, and the children were
so diverse that I doubt they would fit into a single grade anyway. The
fact that they all worked together (with two different directors -- one
jazz oriented and the other classical oriented) is another indicator of
why I posted that leading the children and getting them to invest comes
first (imo, of course).

@-----. !! ===========

The fact that the children were so completely invested in two different
directors makes a point about the phrase "I don't want to get run over"
that began this thread.

It seems to me that if any ensemble director begins with the attitude of
"This is _MY_ ensemble" instead of "My goal is to get these children to
invest in this program somehow", then the director has already slit his
or her own throat.

That's imo, but I hold this opinion strongly.

Cheers,
Bill

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org