As winter's somber skies brings us to a reflective mood, Renata's class has conquered a nice arrangement for barred instruments that is actually a sound carpet for Carl Sandberg's poem "Fog". Lukas' and Arvid's mom, Johanna, has translated this into Swedish, while Varvara's mom, Natalia, is translating into Russian, Renata's class into French, and Melissa's mom, Lisa, into Spanish. This is not the students' original idea, but rather one that was shared by west coast music educator Doug Goodkin.
We start with Goodkin's idea- "Fog"- and later the students will choose a short poem to "sound carpet" with their own musical ideas. This may include movement, speech, sung melody, barred instruments and/or unpitched sounds. We hope to share with you some of these ideas in May at Reflections night.
Elaine's class is learning some beginning rhythm patterns and beginning melodic patterns, while playing instruments and singing.
Susan's class is playing soprano recorder with some jazzy background music supporting them. They are reading the notes on staff. The recorder is such a motivator to read the melody.
The Summers-Knoll Community Folk Dance night is in February. To that end, we have danced "Sashay the Donut", "Sasha" (from last year), and "Solomon Levi". This year's event will also include a grand march and, of course, the Virgina Reel.
Summers-Knoll students ride to the Michigan Theater on Friday for a rollicking good concert performed by the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a "junk" band playing lots of good American folk music of the east coast and the south.
I love the idea of translating beautiful poetry to enjoy the multi-cultural nature of the school! How fantastic! And, we saw the Carolina Chocolate Drops Friday evening and it was fantastic. Roots and string band music have such an important historical role in our country's identity, I hope the musicians spent as much time describing black music and its impact on other forms of music as they did with us that evening. It was amazing!
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