I know I've been lax with updating, but I figured as long as I was on a roll from retooling my website (way, way overdue) I might as well update here. It's bullet point time!
- Federation went beautifully. All my students scored a superior or a superior plus, and to cap it off, one of my students snagged a Judge's Choice Award, which means he got $50 cash for being the judge's favorite that day. Sweet! And gratifying! Usually one of the other teachers in the group sweeps the awards. I stole one several years ago, so having a second student be awarded lets me know that qualitatively, I don't suck. Not a fluke! Drought is over!
- Guild is coming up. I am sending 4 this year, with 2 playing 10-piece programs. The student who won the Judge's Choice Award is playing a slightly risky program. We have less than 6 weeks to kick things into gear. His composer list has really matured - for this audition, we're going to attempt Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Mendelssohn, Joplin, and 2 Bach 2-part inventions. If he does very well, I'm quite looking forward to what next semester will bring. I have another student who is bringing Bach, Grieg, Debussy, Prokofiev, and Beethoven to the table. I love my older students!
- Spring break is almost here, except that spring break for my studio and spring break for the school at which I teach are not the same two weeks. Oops. I suppose the extra time means I can get back to practicing or studying Dalcroze.
- Speaking of Dalcroze, the 2-week course I taught in January went pretty well, all things considered. Not bad for a first-timer. I think the girls enjoyed themselves, though I have learned that trying Plastique Animee with 6th graders is not a winning combo. Especially not with the exposition of the first movement of Beethoven's 5th. I tried a smaller-scale Plastique on the penultimate day, with me playing a short Burgmuller etude (op. 100 no. 15, Ballade) and the experiment worked pretty well. However, when moving to a larger scale with more complicated music, not only was it too much for the younger students to grasp, but group dynamics kicked into overdrive. I knew I had a student or two that I needed to manage more intensely, but I did not count on her frustration being expressed in such an immature fashion.
I did learn that interrupted and continuous canon is very doable with this age set so long as I stick to meters like 2/2 or 4/4 while keeping rhythms simple. Games of imagination and improvisation were the biggest hits. And although at first it felt like 90 minutes every day was going to be a super long time, by the end I felt like it wasn't enough. I started with 4 concepts or so on day 1, and quickly realized by day 2 that I could handle, at most, 3 large concepts. Sometimes we only stuck to 2 because the games from the previous day were repeated and built upon. And sometimes, in true Dalcroze fashion, I looked at my lesson plan, written the night before or the day of, and disregarded half of it. By the time week 2 drew to a close I had become much better at anticipating what my students could do, and I could create a lesson plan that could be followed to the letter without feeling like I was constraining myself or my class.
There's a possibility that I may get to do another Dalcroze session for a local music camp in July. It would be one week of daily classes for younger kids, and a week of daily classes for older kids. I'd love to do it, and I'd love to say yes, let's make this concrete, but I have a slight problem. I'm due in mid-June, and I'll be in Boston in mid-July. The camp starts the Monday after I return. I've never been one to back down from a challenge - I still think I can do it - but I'm not sure if taking on work so soon after giving birth is a good idea. I went back to work and school full time 4 weeks after my first child was born and I swore I would never do that again. It's a good thing the director of the camp is very accommodating.
Time will tell, I suppose. Hopefully this kid will get here earlier rather than later. I'm very much into letting nature take its course, so I won't set a date for this kid to be here, but uh... hey, if you're listening, the early part of June would be just perfect. Thank you!
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