Creative

I have some tremendously creative students.  One of the assignments this week in MUSC 1010 for Musical Theatre majors (a course I’m teaching for the first time this year) was to develop a four-part canon of increasing rhythmic complexity, making up a text for it too.

Michael D. devised one so funny I just had to share it.  The text:

“Woof woof moo moo moo moo moo moo moo moo (repeat)
Dog cow
He’s a dog cow, not a cat dog
Woof moo moo woof moo moo woof (repeat)
Dogs eat hay and dogs eat pee-ple.  You a dog or you a cow pow!
Woof moo woof moo woof moo woof.  Woof moo woof moo woof moo woof woof!”

This student was obviously an over-achiever, since he wrote a six-part canon.  But we enjoyed performing it today in class nevertheless.

The lyricist and composer, as viewed on his Facebook profile.

A new day

In my office this afternoon.

The new semester – Spring 2012 – is nigh.  Classes begin in this department in less than 24 hours.

I’ve spent much of the last two days, including today’s holiday, at Thompson House, prepping syllabi for voice lessons and the theory class I’m teaching, catching up on email (and deleting old emails from the Inbox, which is now almost to 450), writing recommendation letters, checking in with voice students regarding this week’s auditions, engaging in some longer-range administrative planning and doing, and so on.

And I sang yesterday the Webster Groves/Rock Hill Martin Luther King Jr. event, which was lovely.

It’s now nearly 4 p.m., and on this MLK Day I am ready to head home, where later this evening my freshman music theatre students will gather for a little welcome back /slash/ late Christmas party.  I am making Jan Richard’s famous Polish Mistakes in hopes of keeping the tradition alive.

I’m ready for life at school to resume again. A four-week break is long enough.

 

Cornell Glee Club

The Cornell Glee Club sang a fabulous concert last evening in the CMS concert hall. Especially moving for me — Stephen Chatman’s Reconciliation on poetry by Walt Whitman, the spiritual arrangements, and of course the Cornell alma mater, sung to the same tune as the Kansas anthem, with many of the same words.

I hosted three of the guys at my house, providing them the Brie breakfast casserole this morning.  ‘Twasn’t a posh night, but the food this morning made up for the middle-classness of the lodgings.

Here’s a shot of Hangovers, the small ensemble of the Cornell Glee Club, in concert last evening:

Spring Convocation

The university president presided at our Spring Convocation yesterday.  Faculty and staff heard a number of updates and celebrated successes.  Take a look!

Cornell Glee Club

The Cornell University Glee Club performs at Webster University Wednesday evening, in one day’s time!  This group is the country’s collegiate first male glee club, and still one of its finest.  Don’t miss this concert!

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Webster University Department of Music hosts the Cornell University Glee Club on Wednesday, January 11, at 7.30 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the CMS Center, 535 Garden Avenue.  (Since this is a Repertory Theatre performance night, parking is the Garden Avenue parking structure.)

Tickets at the door are $15 cash or check, $5 for students and children.

We are hopeful of a large crowd for this oldest American university glee club!

Benefits

[I'm reposting this from my friend Darin in Dayton.]

 

Life Lessons in the Arts

We have all heard of art for arts sake, but are there life lessons to be learned from a study of the arts?

According to Elliot Eisner, professor of education and art at Stanford University, there are several. In his article, “10 Lessons the Arts Teach” in youngARTS magazine he discusses what else you can learn from living an artists life.

1 The arts emphasize the importance of how things interact with each other rather than what is right or wrong.
2 The arts teach that problems can have several solutions that are equally valid.
3 The arts promote having multiple perspectives.
4 The arts reveal that goals and purposes are seldom final, but rather they change and develop over time.
5 The arts prove that certain emotions transcend language and words.
6 The arts teach the importance of small details.
7 The arts teach how to create within parameters.
8 The arts teach expression without saying anything.
9 The arts allow us to explore things we could not otherwise do.
10 An arts education shows the importance of art in our society.

Cornell Glee

Webster University Department of Music hosts the Cornell University Glee Club on Wednesday, January 11, at 7.30 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the CMS Center, 535 Garden Avenue.  (Since this is a Repertory Theatre performance night, parking is the Garden Avenue parking structure.)

Tickets at the door are $15 cash or check, $5 for students and children.

Songs

The semester is over, but I’m hearing in my mind the sound of my students’ voices this week.  Several jury songs are stuck and I can’t seem to let them go.

My seniors – three theatre majors – are especially present.

Kyle, an acting major from Cincinnati, stretched mightily this term and embraced Carl Loewe’s Edward, an early 19th-century murder ballad.  I just can’t get his haunting shriek of a last line, “the curse of hell,” from my mind.  That ballad was a fun romp, and I’m so glad he liked the piece enough to grapple with it.

Audrey, my fabulous musical theatre soprano, chose to sing A Letter from Sullivan Ballou.  I was in tears at several lessons as she interpreted the innards out of this piece.  She embodied the song at her jury, and I’m stuck now with “Always, always” from the last minute of the song.

Jared, musical theatre tenor from Illinois, took a chance on a big sing, and succeeded.  I’ve been waiting for years for a tenor or soprano to sing Lalba separa dalla luce lombra by Tosti.  Jared decided to set placidity aside and go for the moment.  His build-up to the high B-flat at “eterno” was thrilling.

I have other talented and challenging and gratifying students, and every one of them sang a fine jury this term.  But these three are on my mind this weekend, and in my inner ears.

The long goodbye of the senior year marches on.

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Express yourself

Webster’s holiday greeting this year:

http://www.webster.edu/holiday/

Gift to the City

Here are scenes from today’s Gift to the City concert at Christ Church Cathedral in Saint Louis:

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