Page 29 - Glasbenopedagoški zbornik Akademije za glasbo v Ljubljani / The Journal of Music Education of the Academy of Music in Ljubljana: Mostovi med formalnim in neformalnim glasbenim izobraževanjem, leto 15, zvezek 31 / Year 15, Issue 31, 2019
P. 29
Ana Èoriæ, DEVELOPING COMMUNITY MUSIC ACTIVITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION...
all of them were listening to the music very carefully. In the conversations with children
and their teachers after workshops, we got information that their favourite part of the
workshop is the music itself, live performed.
Working on The Bear and The Piano, a story by David Litchfield about the bear who is
exploring his talent for piano playing which brings him from the woods to the big city
concert halls, but also back to his friends and family in the woods, was the first step to the
exploration of recording sounds for the story. It was the first workshop where we
combined live performance with sounds that we reproduced using small JBL’s portable
speakers. Since we used our personal two speakers, we tried to explore how the sound
“travels” in space, in order to get a more “stereo” sound in the room. For the beginning, we
had sounds from the woods and traffic sounds from the city, designed to illustrate two
different scenes in the story. Besides the fact that using recorded sounds during
storytelling was very surprising for visually impaired children, who were constantly
asking us ‘how did we do that’, it was a good chance to include more students in the
program. In this case, we had a student from Theory and Composition Department, who
wanted to participate in the program in spite of the fact she can’t come to rehearsals, so
recording the sounds was her idea for participation.
Working on this story was a meaningful step forward for us because it was the first time
we composed songs for the children and we also invented some characters who do not
exist in the original story because we had more performers than characters in the story.
Even the title of the story was different, The Bear and the Guitar because we couldn’t use
the piano in the spaces where we performed it. It was the first story when we started to
think about the meaning of the stage direction because we had to watch on the movement
in space during a live performance of songs, reading text and implementing recorded
sounds in the performance. Furthermore, since this was the first story which we performed
more than two times, in various contexts, we started to think about the importance of the
expressive reading of the text and started thinking about the possibility of learning the text
by heart. This thought came naturally because we had workshops with children who can
see us, and that gives a whole new dimension to the performance. Although we managed
to work on expressive reading with the professional radio drama director in future work,
we still didn’t manage to learn everything by heart. The main reason is the lack of
rehearsals where we naturally, as musicians (not actors), always focus more on the
musical part. Besides that, we have a lot of workshops in the community, which doesn’t let
us time to go so deep into the performance level because the focus is on interaction with
children and the follow-up activities. However, the question stayed open and we are still
working on finding the right balance for our workshops. We encouraged the reflection
about our workshops at the Academy of Music in Zagreb when we shared this story with
critical friends (students and teachers) who came to our workshop. We asked them to be
blindfolded in order to experience the story the same as the visually impaired children
approach it. It was interesting and valuable for our future work to observe their reactions
and hear their impressions.
The Bear and the Guitar was a meaningful step towards cohesion of the group, as well as
the autonomy of each student, who was now ready to work on each aspect on their own. As
a facilitator, I could let them be more free in an artistic and pedagogical sense. The first
27
all of them were listening to the music very carefully. In the conversations with children
and their teachers after workshops, we got information that their favourite part of the
workshop is the music itself, live performed.
Working on The Bear and The Piano, a story by David Litchfield about the bear who is
exploring his talent for piano playing which brings him from the woods to the big city
concert halls, but also back to his friends and family in the woods, was the first step to the
exploration of recording sounds for the story. It was the first workshop where we
combined live performance with sounds that we reproduced using small JBL’s portable
speakers. Since we used our personal two speakers, we tried to explore how the sound
“travels” in space, in order to get a more “stereo” sound in the room. For the beginning, we
had sounds from the woods and traffic sounds from the city, designed to illustrate two
different scenes in the story. Besides the fact that using recorded sounds during
storytelling was very surprising for visually impaired children, who were constantly
asking us ‘how did we do that’, it was a good chance to include more students in the
program. In this case, we had a student from Theory and Composition Department, who
wanted to participate in the program in spite of the fact she can’t come to rehearsals, so
recording the sounds was her idea for participation.
Working on this story was a meaningful step forward for us because it was the first time
we composed songs for the children and we also invented some characters who do not
exist in the original story because we had more performers than characters in the story.
Even the title of the story was different, The Bear and the Guitar because we couldn’t use
the piano in the spaces where we performed it. It was the first story when we started to
think about the meaning of the stage direction because we had to watch on the movement
in space during a live performance of songs, reading text and implementing recorded
sounds in the performance. Furthermore, since this was the first story which we performed
more than two times, in various contexts, we started to think about the importance of the
expressive reading of the text and started thinking about the possibility of learning the text
by heart. This thought came naturally because we had workshops with children who can
see us, and that gives a whole new dimension to the performance. Although we managed
to work on expressive reading with the professional radio drama director in future work,
we still didn’t manage to learn everything by heart. The main reason is the lack of
rehearsals where we naturally, as musicians (not actors), always focus more on the
musical part. Besides that, we have a lot of workshops in the community, which doesn’t let
us time to go so deep into the performance level because the focus is on interaction with
children and the follow-up activities. However, the question stayed open and we are still
working on finding the right balance for our workshops. We encouraged the reflection
about our workshops at the Academy of Music in Zagreb when we shared this story with
critical friends (students and teachers) who came to our workshop. We asked them to be
blindfolded in order to experience the story the same as the visually impaired children
approach it. It was interesting and valuable for our future work to observe their reactions
and hear their impressions.
The Bear and the Guitar was a meaningful step towards cohesion of the group, as well as
the autonomy of each student, who was now ready to work on each aspect on their own. As
a facilitator, I could let them be more free in an artistic and pedagogical sense. The first
27
