Expérience 8: L’importance de l’éducation musicale dans la classe

[traduction française non disponible]

Saturday, February 28, 2009, from 12:00 pm to 12:15 pm

With Ann La Plante — General Manager, Alliance For Canadian New Music Projects

(The following is the complete talk, provided by Ann La Plante)

The mandate of Alliance For Canadian New Music Projects is to promote the study, performance and composition of Canadian contemporary classical music. We do this of course with our Contemporary Showcase Festivals that currently run in nineteen centres across Canada. These festivals are run on a master-class format, where the student learns two pieces of music composed by a Canadian composer and the adjudicator works with the student to understand and enhance the performance of the piece. We like to say that there is no such thing as a bad performance, just varying degrees of excellency. Each student comes away from their particular class with high self esteem and a greater understanding of the pieces that they have chosen. The adjudicators talk about the composer as well as the music. There are no marks. We have been doing this since 1970, when a group of music teachers got together and decided that an exclusive contemporary Canadian music festival was needed. Personally I think we do this very well and we have many examples of successful ex participants. Scott St. John, Jean Stillwell, Stewart Goodyear, Nathan Bartley, Yval Fichman, Kevork Andonian, Measha Brueggergosman and composer Roger Berg are among the many participants that were scholarship recipients from former festivals.

Other programmes that we do are:

Student Composer Workshops

An established Canadian composer leads a group of young people of all ages, in composition techniques over two weekends. The assistant to the composer is one of our students that have come through this programme and gone on either to composition or performance. This programme is done in this format in Toronto and Ottawa. We adopted this format after doing this programme for two years at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Calgary, Edmonton and Langley have a similar programme that they include in their Contemporary showcase festival.

Composition Class

Students submit unperformed compositions under a pseudonym in three different classes depending on age. An established Canadian composer has been employed to adjudicate these compositions and provide instructional comment. Most of these compositions in the past three years have come from students in High School music programmes. Eugene Astapov who was the finalist of the Vancouver Symphony Olympic Competition was the winner again this year.

Choral Workshops

We encourage school choirs to come together with an established Choral leader who works with them in a master-class environment to enhance their learning and performance of Canadian Choral music.

Composing in the Classroom

We provide an established Canadian composer and an assistant (a pianist)

to go into the classroom for five to six periods and teach composition. The content depends on the age of the students and the grade. We have done this programme successfully for four years now in Grades 9 to 12. The composers we have used are Dr. Andrew Staniland, Maria Molinari, Alice Ho and Juliette Palmer.

Orchestral Workshop

Three year ago I realized that there was very little opportunity for High School orchestras to perform for established conductors. I approached Maestro Mario Bernardi and he agreed he would adjudicate a workshop of Canadian Orchestral music. This has since become an annual event that co-insides with our Toronto Contemporary Showcase. Year two was with Maestro Victor Feldbrill and year three was with Maestro Gary Kulesha as clinician/adjudicators. This workshop has been extremely successful.

And recently thanks to the Trillium Foundation we have added two new programmes —

Composing in the Classroom/Orchestral Workshop

The Composing in the Classroom and the Orchestral Workshop went so well that when I was contacted by a member of the Kingston Community Orchestra about a possible competition for their regular programming, I suggested that we have a class of music students at the High School level compose a piece of music for their Orchestra and that Maestro Gary Kulesha would do an adjudication and conduct the piece. Dr. Andrew Staniland and Thompson Egbo Egbo went to the Napanee Secondary School for classes that totaled twenty hours and worked with twenty-six young musicians who composed a piece called “The Spark”. This was performed as part of the regular programming in November. Maestro Kulesha talked to all of the young composers before the performance and then worked with the Orchestra in an impromptu rehearsal. It was an amazing performance. If you could have seen the looks of sheer joy on their faces after the performance — it was very gratifying. This programme will be replicated in several communities in Ontario. I would like to play “The Spark” for you at the end of the presentation if there is time.

Opera in the Classroom

For four or five years I have been looking for a programme to take into the classrooms of elementary school children and especially children that might not have a lot of formal musical training. Opera in the Classroom was a result of Colleen Murphy King and Thompson Egbo Egbo and his work with young people in a summer camp at Regent Park in Toronto. For twenty hours Colleen Murphy King, as librettist, Dr. Andrew Staniland, composer, Amber Ebert, director (from Tapestry) and Thompson Egbo Egbo, a musician, work with a class of young people to compose and perform an opera. We have an opera singer (from Tapestry) come in to show the students how to express emotion with their voices. The students come up with the ideas and then the librettist writes a libretto. The students and the composer then compose the music. The students audition for the roles and rehearse. They then perform the Opera for their classmates and parents. We have completed one school with a group of Grade 4 in Toronto and are in the process of finishing a second school in Brampton with a group of Grade 7/8. I am attaching the finished score for the Grade 4 level students from Firgrove Public School in the handout. It is worth noting that Eric Schwindt has taken on the role of composer in the Brampton school. Eric came up through our Composition Class programme.

In 2002 Dr. David Gordon Duke and I completed a partial cross country tour of workshops for teachers and students. We were in Saskatoon, Regina in Saskatchewan: Winnipeg, Manitoba: North Bay, Toronto, Kingston, London, Mississauga, Niagara Falls, Kitchener Waterloo and Dunnville in Ontario: Calgary, Alberta and Langley, British Columbia. During this tour I realized that reaching young people meant reaching teachers and we feel that we have achieved this in a small way. As part of the tour we commissioned six young emerging composers across the country. It is interesting to note that Vincent Ho was one of these emerging composers and now he is a finalist in the CBC Composition Competition. Eric Schwindt, who is currently working on the Opera in the Classroom programme, was another.

The future of Canadian classical music lies with our young people. We need to encourage and stimulate them starting in kindergarten and keep all of the opportunities open all the way up to University level. Not all of these young people will go on to be established composers and performers but they will be audiences and hopefully when they are spending their entertainment dollar they will look for a Canadian work. When I see young people performing and composing I feel that it signifies a message of hope for our country that will strengthen the ties of our many cultures. Music softens. Music brings people of all ages and cultures together. It is important that we as an artistic community encourage these young people and let them know that their drams and ideas are important. The sound of classical music will change as our new Canadians bring their culture to their compositions. It is important that we embrace this concept. As Alexander Rappoport said after one of our Student Composer Workshops — “Wouldn’t it be awful if we looked back on this century and realized that no new music had been created”.