McGill University, Faculty of Music

An innovative concert series that targets the interests and attention spans of children aged 4 to 13 and 14 to 16, this project integrates learning music, the language arts, and the visual arts with other applications in history and geography. It frames music listening as a narrative or representational process in which we continually "write and re-write" our own faces, and uses contemporary music as a means of celebrating and discovering students' own identity and heritage in an ever-changing world civilization.

At the heart of the project is a live performance at McGill University's Pollack Hall. This performance is prepared and followed-up by a series of creative instructional activities that encourage discovery and dialogue while developing musical understanding and communication skills.

Project History
The Music
Concert Performance
Pre- and Post Concert Instructional Activities

The project was an outgrowth of an award-winning project, "What Makes Opera," sponsored by the Quebec Ministry of Heritage. The goal of the project was to introduce children to opera while providing an opportunity for them to discover their own heritage and identity.

The concert performance featured a series of excerpts selected to explore how the various elements of opera (voices, orchestra, libretto, staging, etc.) contribute to the the telling of a story. Excerpts were chosen for their historical and stylistic variety, and profiled operas which were currently being presented in Montreal. Pre- and post-concert instructional materials explored basic musical concepts through a series of creative activities that elicited the students' responses to the literary, historic, mythological, and other sources of Opera. Over 1200 students participated in the program in its first year. The number has grown each year.

Musical selections fall into two categories: the work or excerpt(s) to be featured in the live performance and ancillary musical selections utilized to spark the imagination in the classroom instructional activities.

The featured composition is usually a work written by a contemporary composer that lasts between 15 and 40 minutes, depending upon the specific age of the target audience and the different types of activities used to introduce the music.

Ancillary musical selections include a wide range of musical styles, beginning with selections central to the students' own lives and listening world, extending to classical music and music from other cultures.

To date, three themes have served as organizers, Opera, Fairy Tales, and Painting.

The concert performance begins with a collaborative exchange in which children and performing musicians "tell their own stories," stories that ultimately explore the various instruments, the types of sounds they make, their origins, and their roles in the music to be performed. After the musical presentation, the final strains of the music (or some other suitable segment or structural frame) become the basis for the students to "continue" the theme. The concert ends with a question and answer period, enabling further exchange and dialogue between performers and children.

Activities have been presented to date in the form of a student workbook and accompanying tape. The basic approach of the workbook is one of guided exploration, with each chapter leading the student to explore and discover, individually, in small groups, or as a class. A series of enrichment activities at the end of each chapter enables teachers to tailor learning activities to the specific needs and interests of the students.

Specific activities vary with the intent, inspiration, and musical characteristics of the featured musical selection. The developmental sequence revolves around the students' own voice, moving from voice as sound through voice as a identity, voice as expressive, voice as one of a member of a larger cultural community, etc. to voice as one's individual style within that larger cultural community. Creative applications provide opportunities to explore and create at a variety of levels in the literary, musical, and visual arts.

For more information, please contact me.