Hi All!

Here's my update and my thoughts to date...

Yesterday's classes went really well. Listening to the students' presentations of their stories proved inspirational for me and I am more excited than ever to get started writing music and songs.

I am awaiting a response from my friend in LA who specializes in Ghanaian song, but I am looking forward to reading her thoughts in incorporating aspects of West African song into the libretto and musical score we develop with Sona's class.

In both classes, I was struck by the imaginative variety of characters and tales created byt the students, and their presentations provided useful food for thought. As Sedina mentioned, chorus work seems to be the best option so that the student's thoughts and stories can best be heard. Sedina and I have discussed using small groups of students to represent characters, so that text and lyrics can still be understood under the duress of stage fright! In terms of singing, articulation of words and projection seem to be important issues to continue to address throughout the program. If we can convince the students to use the same voices they use on the playground onstage, we should be in business.

For next Tuesday with Sona's class, I am planning to examine the topic of songs and songwriting. I will bring in some short audio clips of opera arias and African songs, and hopefully use whichever song Sedina chooses to teach the kids as an example and study subject for the topic of lyric-writing. I am going to break down the topic of song into components: lyrics, melody and accompanyment. I will make sure to have several examples of strong lyric writing, maybe from musical theatre...something concise. I want to show rhyme scheme and structure and then examine more conceptual aspects of song as part of a libretto, ie: mood, who's singing the song and overall subject/important issues in the song.

I will play examples of recitative and aria, and I'm thinking maybe three short recitative-song (aria) pairings, with the emphasis placed on the song part. I'll split the class into three and challenge each group to create a few lines of introductory dialogue (to be set to music) and then write a song, for the beginning, middle and end of the opera. At the end of the class, I'll poll the class to see who wants to sing and who wants to be a part of "the band," and I'll try to see what instruments we will have to work with.

Ideally, there will be a libretto by the fourth class, which I will set to music by the fifth class.

For Amanda and Mubeen's class, I'll have to think of ways to speed up the process, so that ideally both classes will have a libretto and music by the fifth class and thus will be able to get started rehearsing.

Anyway, I'll see y'all at the opera tonight! Thanks Zoe for the podcast and the blog excerpt. They have been and will continue to be very helfpul!