Open House: We had a small contingent of chorus students to sing the National Anthem for the visiting parents
September: The chorus began preparing for the show "Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus." They also began a comparison of musicians, Elton John and Franz Schubert. The songs studied were "Your Song/ Crocodile Rock" and "Ave Maria."
October: Participated in TUSD Choral festival and showcased a student project, a song studied and prepared solely by students with minimal assistance from their musical instructor (Where go the Boats). This song will later be a part of a contest.
November: Our Fall concert featuring the beginning and advanced chorus. This also gave a preview of the show "Yes Virginia..."
The Premiere of "Yes Virginia..."
December: This was the first time in a few years that we did not travel to Phoenix to Carol at the State Capitol. We performed the final show of Yes Virginia instead.
January: Our focus was to concentrate more on music reading in a "socratic" way in that students used what they knew to create their own assessments. Essentially, they wrote and performed their own music. We also began preparing our songs for a contest that would occur on April 11. The 3 songs we prepared are: "Where Go The Boats, The Trout, and If I Could Catch A Rainbow.
February: The STEM focus centered around how the introduction of one item could affect the whole. We studied the "Tristan" chord, basically an unusual grouping of notes the helped composers to represent emotion better in music, thus making the telling of stories through music, much easier. The song "The Trout" fell right into that philosophy as it was a story of a magic fish. Music at the time of Schubert had very strong story telling qualities and the Tristan chord was a technique that occurred shortly after the Trout. Music had more emotional connections after that time.
March: So much of the music from the time period of the Trout through today was affected by the Tristan chord. Many different classic pieces that are familiar have emotion and stories behind them, for example, the Wedding March by Wagner and the Wedding Song by Mendelssohn. We experienced how music at that time reflected many tragic and emotional events in America, and even though the advanced musicianship was not quite developed in our young country, many emotional events that occurred here were represented by simple music that still told a story. This connected the Tristan chord to the Ragtime, Blues and Jazz. We began to work on numbers related to American music by Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton and George Gershwin.
April: We went to contest and performed the 3 songs for a rating of "Excellent." See picture below:
We are planning to perform before each of the Theater productions of "Legally Blonde" in events called "The Olio." Students will perform contemporary numbers as well as the beginning and advanced choruses performing their Blues and Gershwin numbers. The post in May should detail how the Olio turns out.
