Choral

UpFront Achieving variety within an arrangement

We may achieve variety in many ways within a musical arrangement. This example is taken from an arrangement that I did for the opening of the Thanksgiving Parade in Philadelphia for WPVI (ABC-Disney); O Come All Ye Faithful.

It is scored for eleven instruments; three trumpets, two trombones, three saxophones, and three rhythm (piano, bass, and drums). I considered beginning the arrangement with a brass quartet ala chorale-style, but felt that three musical lines moving at different speeds would accumulate the needed tension and momentum, that the parade opening required. These three lines, (in a musical conversation), lead to a forte ensemble passage beginning in m.11 that builds in intensity.

A Love Affair with Music: Vincent Macrina and the Brockton Band Program

From the late 1830s to the early twentieth century, Brockton, Massachusetts was known as Shoe City, with 135 footwear factories flourishing within its borders. Since the end of the manufacturing era, Brockton has acquired a new identity. As the birthplace of Rocky Marciano and Marvin Hagler, it is now known as The City of Champions. This year the citizens of Brockton officially recognized another homegrown champion: Vincent Macrina, music teacher in the Brockton Public Schools for the past 33 years. Now director of music for the entire district, Macrina has garnered so many honors and awards in his career that he has become a Brockton institution.

He, along with the ensembles he directs, which include the Brockton High School (BHS) Advanced Concert Band, Select Wind Ensemble, Jazz Band, and Marching Band, are renowned throughout the region. Like the academic and athletic accomplishments of its students, the band program is, in Macrinas words, Brocktons pride and joy.

Born in the small town of Gasperina, in the Calabria region of southern Italy, Macrina came to this country in 1958 at age 10. His father, a tailor, had emigrated five years earlier, and brought his family over to Brockton in time for his son to enter fourth grade.

SBOUpfront: Planning a Performance

Music Literacy Applications

A new frontier for music educators is interactive Web-based instruction and assessment. Why? Because there aren't enough hours in the day let alone class time to do all the great things music educators can accomplish. And now with music technology, it is possible to successfully augment your curriculum as well as cleverly assess all those pressing standards.

Interactive Web-based instruction and assessment can bring you and your students together with 24/7 flexibility. Band, choral, and string performance techniques now have home instruction options because programs such as Makemusic's SmartMusic and Pyware's iPAS can improve the quality of home practice and provide accountability data.

The most recent development is numeric data assessment on your Web site that is not easily obtained in the classroom setting where teachers are overloaded with so many responsibilities. I can't think of anything more precious to busy music educators than more efficient use of their time.

Web Development for Music Educators pt 4

A new frontier for music educators is interactive Web-based instruction and assessment. Why? Because there aren't enough hours in the day let alone class time to do all the great things music educators can accomplish. And now with music technology, it is possible to successfully augment your curriculum as well as cleverly assess all those pressing standards.

Interactive Web-based instruction and assessment can bring you and your students together with 24/7 flexibility. Band, choral, and string performance techniques now have home instruction options because programs such as Makemusic's SmartMusic and Pyware's iPAS can improve the quality of home practice and provide accountability data.

The most recent development is numeric data assessment on your Web site that is not easily obtained in the classroom setting where teachers are overloaded with so many responsibilities. I can't think of anything more precious to busy music educators than more efficient use of their time.

How to Build a Percussion Ensemble

Involving your school percussionists in band and orchestra can sometimes be a difficult task. Certainly there is a great deal of literature that utilizes a lot of percussion, and that music should be performed both for the sake of artistic integrity and for your percussionists to be involved with playing some meaty parts. But at times, the percussion section is often neglected due to the style of music being performed (i.e., a Bach chorale, symphonic music that does not involve a lot of percussion, etc.).

There are ways around this dilemma and it is possible to include your percussion section in these pieces. But so many times, and at all levels, the percussion section is left out, so to speak. While conductors are working on clarinet intonation, a difficult technical passage for the saxophones, balance in the low brass, etc., the percussionists are idle and often bored.

Those pieces that do involve a lot of percussion keep them happy and audiences enjoy watching your percussionists run around playing everything under the sun. But let’s face it: there is a lot of time in rehearsals where percussionists just sit around doing nothing.

SURVEY: CONCERT PROGRAMMING

Every director has his or her own approach to selecting the music that will be performed during an upcoming concert. From listening to promotional CDs from music publishers to attending as many other schools' concerts as possible, directors are always on the lookout for new and appealing music to perform with their students.

School Band and Orchestra magazine recently surveyed a sampling of music directors at the elementary and secondary teaching levels about what factors they consider when selecting concert music for their ensembles.

"I keep many lists from great conductors and composers that I have worked with and spoken to over the years that I refer to often when selecting programs. I attempt to listen to as many pieces as possible each year in concert and promotional recordings. A piece that does not work for you now may work well five years from now. Keep as many recordings available as possible for future reference," advises Bernie Potter, a director at the Roosevelt Fine Arts Magnet School in Peoria, Ill.

Lee Berk

Photos by Tony Scarpetta, Scarpetta Photography, Somerville, Mass.

Many of the country's prominent colleges and universities - Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Brown - have been named after individuals who were influential in their schools' establishment and evolution. So it is also with the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass. - though, perhaps, somewhat less conventionally. While the other schools were named for adult leaders who made significant contributions to their respective colleges, Berklee was named for a young boy who had yet to realize his own role at the school.

Lawrence Berk, founder of the Berklee College of Music, created the school's name by reversing his young son Lee's first and last names and combining them. While Lee Berk was unable to offer his leadership and support at such a young age, he made up for it after he graduated from the Boston University School of Law in the mid-1960s.

TEACHER PREP: BACK-TO-SCHOOL BASICS

This article is an excerpt from the book "Teaching Music at the Secondary Level: a Pedagogical and Curricular Guide," by Dr. Steven Porter and Joel Smales, published by Phantom Publications in association with Players Press and distributed by Empire Publishing Service, P.O. Box 1344, Studio City, CA 91614.

By Dr. Steven Porter and Joel Smales

Let's make the assumption that you are beginning the teaching of your performing group program either because it is your first teaching assignment or because it is your first year in a district to which you have just transferred. What follows is a guide to help you organize your program successfully. It occurs in the order in which things should be done. Hopefully, you have not been hired at the last minute, and you have at least the summer months to prepare for the start of the school year in September.

REPORT: BUILDING A NEW MUSIC FACILITY

When York High's band strikes up the school song in its new band hall, director and music department chair Ron Polancich hears more than just the music. He hears the fine-tuned harmony of school administrators, architects and taxpayers whose collaboration has resulted in Illinois' most expensive school to date and a state-of-the-art music education facility. He also hears the final proof that his extensive, and sometimes taxing, involvement with the entire process has been worthwhile.

Built in 1919, York High School in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst required a complex renovation and construction project, keeping intact the original edifice while enlarging the school by 18 percent and thoroughly modernizing the interior. Pat Sumrow, a former York administrator for whom the position Construction Facilitator was created, consulted with Polancich, the music director, even before an architect had been hired. Knowing that a music classroom differs from a math or English classroom in significant but subtle ways and that a music department has specific architectural needs that other departments do not, Sumrow had asked Polancich and his music department colleagues to bring to preliminary discussions issues that an architect might otherwise miss.

UPFRONT: DESTINATION ORLANDO

With its pleasant climate and copious attractions, Orlando, Fla., has historically been a popular destination for school music groups across the country. With so many festival and performance opportunities available, directors may have a difficult time deciding which option is best for their ensembles. With that thought in mind, SBO presents an alphabetical guide to some of the music-related activities in the Orlando area.

Interdisciplinary Teaching in Middle School Music

This article was reprinted with permission from Tempo, the official magazine of the New Jersey Music Educators Association.

Within the past few years, the interest and need for curriculum integration seems to have intensified through the country for several reasons. New books, new concepts, new interpretations of what should be taught and what should be eliminated present the curriculum planner with a difficult task – especially at the middle school level. State mandates and new educational standards influence the curriculum. We need to rethink these as we select what various areas to study. There is a need to teach students how various subjects actively influence their lives and it is crucial that students understand the impact of each discipline perspective in a connected way.

In regard to the general music classroom at the middle school level, one might say, “Well, I’ve always integrated music with the classroom teachers and other subject disciplines.” Perhaps that is true, but to what degree and how detailed was the integration implemented? A mere sampling of knowledge from each discipline – a bit of history, a bit of literature, a bit of the arts, and so forth – results in a “potpourri” type of curriculum, which lacks focus. Effective interdisciplinary programs should include carefully conceived design features, such as scope and sequence, behavioral indicators of attitude change, criteria that promote and encourage critical-thinking skills and solid methods of evaluation. In “Interdisciplinary Curriculum Design and Implementation,” Heide Hayes Jacobs defines interdisciplinary as “a knowledge view and curriculum approach that consciously applies methodology and language from more than one discipline to examine a central theme, issue, problem, topic or experience. Interdisciplinary does not stress delineation but linkages.”