Fun With Music Day 2008

Music class when I was an elementary-aged student consisted of my classmates and me sitting in our hard seats and singing songs from an old, musty smelling music book. We didn’t stand (unless it was the Star Spangled Banner, of course!), we didn’t move, and we didn’t understand what all of the little ink blots on the page meant. In short, we learned very little about music, AND it wasn’t very fun! I missed out on all of the fun and exciting things about elementary music – moving to music and rhythms, singing something more than a melodic line, making and playing instruments, improvising and composing pieces of music, learning music notation. All of these things and more are what today’s elementary music educator’s can bring into a music classroom.

Partly because I missed out when I was in elementary school, and partly because I still see and hear of elementary music programs following the old “sit-and-sing” approach to elementary music education, I felt it important that the Department of Music attempt to show elementary students just how fun music can be. In 2006, I encouraged Dr. Marian Dura, our department’s elementary music specialist, to begin “Fun With Music Day” as an outreach to get area elementary children in grades K-5 excited about music. The first year was a great success and great fun, and we knew then that “Fun With Music Day” had to be an annual event.

Now in its third year, “Fun With Music Day” again will reach out to area children to get them excited about music and demonstrate how much fun learning music can be. This year’s “Fun With Music Day” will be held on Saturday, November 15 from 9 a.m.-noon in the Marwick-Boyd Fine Arts Center on the campus of Clarion University. The cost is $10 per child. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m. in the lobby of the Marwick-Boyd Auditorium, with pre-registration available online.

For more information or to register online, visit the Department of Music website at www.clarion.edu/music or telephone the Music Office at 814-393-2435. You also may contact Dr. Marian Dura at 814-393-2465 or mdura@clarion.edu.

Dress comfortably and be ready to move to the music!

Symphony Orchestra – Wind Ensemble Concert

The Department of Music will present both the University Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Dr. Marian Dura and the Wind Ensemble directed by Dr. Hubert Toney, Jr. in  concert on Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 3:00 p.m. in the Marwick-Boyd Auditoirum. The afternoon’s concert will begin with the Symphony Orchestra performing Overture to Zampa by L.J. Ferdinand Herold, Leroy Anderson’s famous work The Typewriter, Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla by Mikhail Glinka, and conclude with Geroge Bizet’s Suite No. 1 from Carmen.

The second half of the performance features the Wind Ensemble in a concert titled “Fortress of the Rose.” Opening, the Wind Ensemble will perform Fanfare from La Péri by Paul Dukas, followed by Moderato quasi Marci from Serenade in D minor, op. 44 by Antonin Dvorak. Mark Camphouse’s A Movement for Rosa and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Rhosymedre follow. The afternoon’s concert concludes with Fortress of the Rose by Reber Clark.

The concert is FREE and open to the public. For more information, contact the Department of Music at 814-393-2287.

Ah….Summer!

There’s nothing like summer to enjoy time with family and friends, time away from Clarion, relaxing while sipping a cool drink on the back deck on a warm summer day, and maybe sleep in every once in a while! But, summer is actually a realtively busy time for Theresa in the music office and for many of the music faculty.

The New Student Orientation kept Theresa and me occupied throughout June. It is always exciting to see the new music students “officially” become Clarion students. The information they receive during their one-day orientation is quite overwhelming, but we do manage to go over the Music Education curriculum, make sure they have their Fall and Spring schedules, and offer a few pointers for being successful music students at Clarion. However, I know that much of this information gets lost as they are heading home from Orientation, so I am grateful to have our annual New Music Student Orientation held each year just before classes begin to go over much of the information again.

For many music faculty, this is our best opportunity to focus on professional development activities (and many of the things we really enjoy doing but never have the chance to do during the school year). Dr. Register, professor of woodwinds, again traveled overseas as a member of the International Flute Orchestra. This year’s tour included performances throughout Peru. Dr. Toney attended the 2008 International Trumpet Guild Conference in Banff, Alberta, Canada. He is still telling stories of the “monster” players he heard and met. Don’t worry, though, he’s well prepared for this year’s upcoming Marching Band season! Dr. Dura taught several music subjects at a summer music academy in Warren, PA while teaching a course on-campus in June! Needless to say, she wasn’t overly thrilled with the higher gas prices.

Dr. Johnson has been busy collecting and crunching data for a research project involving the sight reading skills of elementary-aged instrumentalists. Dr. Alviani will be attending the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA-PA) conference in August, and Dr. Wells has been busy preparing to teach an online version of MUS 253-History of Jazz, which he designed, created, and will teach for the first time this fall.

I created and taught an online version of our MUS 131 – Music Fundamentals course during the Summer I session (this brings the number of online music courses offered at Clarion to 4!). And when I haven’t been teaching, cooking, or playing with my kids, I have been busy researching Web 2.0 applications in education and Project Based Learning. I am excited about implementing many new ideas and technologies into classroom instruction and department management this fall (e.g., this blog, our Events Calendar now on Google, department photos on Flickr, etc. – students beware!). Also, the university is changing its web site design and management as a result of a new marketing approach, and is asking all departments to recreate their web sites using the new content management system. So…guess who gets to redesign the website AGAIN?

Other exciting changes taking place in the department this summer include the installation of a SmartMusic studio in one of the practice rooms and the much anticipated (and longed for) installation of a Smart Classroom in one of our regular classrooms. Also, look for an announcement about additions to our faculty in the near future.

So, even though the perception of many is that teachers “take the summer off” (all you teachers can stop laughing now), actually it is one of our busiest times. Yes, we DO try to take some time for ourselves, since it is very important to return in the fall refreshed and energized, ready to meet the new challenges that await us, but our passions are never far from our thoughts.

I hope you are enjoying your summer as much as I am enjoying mine.