Piano stairs

Astor Piaszzolla is Composer of the Month

Astor Piazzolla (1921 – 1992) was an Argentinian composer and bandoneón player. Much of his music was written for tango (the national dance of Argentina). His works revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. An excellent bandoneonist, he regularly performed his own compositions with different ensembles. He is known in his native land as “El Gran Astor” (“The Great Astor”).

Here's a video of Astor Piazzolla from a live performance of "Adios Nonino"



In this video, Piazzolla plays the bandoneon. The music is "Milonga del Angel" (a Milonga is an Argentine form of music which "modulates from minor to major at certain times and its melody is reminiscent of the Argentinean tango" (link)



This video shows Yo-Yo Ma (Cello) and Nestor Marconi (Bandoneón) playing a tango,"Libertango"



This ist he Tango dance scene from the movie "Scent Of A Woman" (1992) in which Al Pacino plays a blind retired Lieutenant Colonel (for which he won an Oscar).
The music is "Por una cabeza" by Carlos Gardel and the girl dancing is Gabrielle Anwar.




photo of Piazzola from Wikimedia Commons

an iPhone orchestra? Blow into your iPhone???

"The mobile phone is a very nice platform for exploring new forms of musical performance," Essl said. "We're not tethered to the physics of traditional instruments. We can do interesting, weird, unusual things..." Read more about it at this link.



Here's how they did it:



There's another video at this link.

Make your own music

Click on the arrow to play my music:

This is from a web site called iNudge, where everyone can create music. You can add to what I made in this little box, or go to the web page and create your own.

• Select 1 of 8 different Sound Patterns from the small Matrixes icons 
• Use your mouse to draw notes on each 16 Step Matrix.
• For each Pattern, adjust Volume, Mute, Clear, or set Audio Pan from Left to Right.
• Click on the Tempo numbers and click up or down to change the overall Tempo.
• Get & Share allows you to Send Mail, Get Link, Get Embed code or Spread in communities.

Early Birds Singing

Best viewed on a PC (sorry Mac users - it's a swf page)



To go to the web page itself, and play the birds in full screen, paste this link into your web browser:

http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/music/early_bird_singers.swf

Master of the Euphonium

"The euphonium, a tuba-like musical instrument, is rarely heard outside of traditional brass bands. Young euph prodigy Matthew White uses hip-hop rhythms and a wild new vocal technique to bring a fresh sound to this underappreciated horn." link



"White was a finalist in the brass section of the 2008 BBC Young Musicians of the Year competition, and has guested with the legendary Black Dyke Band as the first honoree musician in the band's Young Artist Scheme, a yearlong fellowship. He was Principal Euphonium with the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain, and also played with the award-winning Leyland Band. He now continues his study of the euphonium at the Royal Northern College of Music." link

Melodica

If you have an iPhone...



"Melodica presents a 16 by 10 surface where the length represents the 4 bars of a 4/4 beat and the height is a set of 10 notes that all harmonize well together. Interesting if you want to create melodies quickly and simply." Read more about it here.

Composer of the Month - LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Beethoven was a German composer. He was born in 1770 and died in 1827. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most acclaimed and influential composers of all time.

Beethoven was a prolific composer and wrote music for many different instruments and ensembles.

Did you know that Beethoven suffered from deafness, but still continued to write music and to conduct his pieces.

Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata (first movement) solo piano

Für Elise (Bagatelle in A minor)

Symphony Number 5 in C Minor, Opus 67 (Ist movement)

Practive your Saxophone with Giant Steps

This is what John Coltrane's landmark tune and solo look like when they come to life on paper.

Back to back Bach?

Are you interested in Bach? Watch this:


"In the enigmatic Canon 1 a 2 from J. S. Bach’s “Musical Offering” (1747) (also known as “crab canon” or “canon cancrizans”), the manuscript shows a single score, whose beginning joins with the end. This space is topologically equivalent to a bundle of the line segment over the circle, known as a Möbius strip. The simultaneous performance of the deeply related forward and backward paths gives appearance to two voices, whose symmetry determines a reversible evolution. A musical universe is built and then is “unplayed” back into silence." (link)

Thanks to Dan Coleman at Open Culture for helping us find this.

Graphical Score Animations

Using his Music Animation Machine, Stephen Malinowski has created some intriguing looks at music.

The video below shows an animated score of Beethoven’s 5th, and you can use this chart that explains what the colors in the score mean. Essentially each color represents a particular instrument. Get the chart here,



and Debussy's Claire de la Lune:



Here is the playlist for music by Bach:



Go to the YouTube page (with links to all 63 videos of all kinds of music): http://www.youtube.com/user/smalin and the Musical Animation Machine's web page is here: http://www.musanim.com/. You can read an interview with Stephen Malinowski here.

photo of Stephen Anthony Malinowski from Wikipedia

One Bag of Rice. Playscript

Year 5 students. Here are the details for your Performing Arts Assessment.

• You have 3 weeks to prepare for your performance.

• Performances will be in the week week beginning 11th October

LEARNING YOUR PART: Please have a look at the script and learn your part. Scripts will not be allowed for the final performance.

PROPS: Check that your group has the following props (small tin can drum, rucksack, bag of rice, pot, sheets, or something for the washerwoman to wash, coat)

SET: You may wish to build a set. Think carefully about how you will do this. You may use some of the boxes and card in the PA room, or you may wish to do this at home and to bring it into school.

COSTUMES: Please bring in costumes for your character.

REMEMBER - YOU WILL NEED TO BE READY TO PERFORM IN 3 WEEKS TIME.

GOOD LUCK!



(Click on the picture of each page to open it full size)

COMPOSER OF THE MONTH: ARTHUR HONEGGER

Arthur Honegger (1892 – 1955) was a Swiss composer who was born in France and lived for most of his life in Paris. His most frequently performed work is called Pacific 231, which creates the sounds of a steam locomotive through music. He wrote this piece in 1923. It is written for an orchestra to perform.



You can read more about Arthur Honegger at Artist in Residence.

The Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra

On the The Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra's web page, you can see and hear about the works they are performing. In this video, conductor Wayne Marshall talks about "L'enfant et les sortileges", describing (in English) how the singers and instrumentalists of the orchestra imitate the characters from the tale and bring a child's fantasies to life trhough Ravel's music. Hay Beurskens (in Dutch) gives guided tour gives along the different instruments and demonstrates the wind machine.…

Click on the arrow to start the video.

The Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra plays L'enfant et les sortileges by Maurice Ravel.

In the column on the right side of the web page, you'll find links to other short videos which talk about works performed by the orchestra: Brahms, Dvorak, Frank, Gershwin, Glinka, Hayden, Khachaturian, Mahler, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Schmidt, Schubert, Schumann, Shostakovitch, Scriabin, and Johann Strauss. All the videos include some English and some Dutch dialogue.

(You can use http://babelfish.yahoo.com to translate the text of the web page.)

Shaun the Sheep

Summer fun - whily you're waiting to get back to Performing Arts class, you can practice your musical skils at this web site at the BBC.

Recorder Karate

Recorder Karate is a fun way to learn to play the recorder using some ideas from the martial art of karate. All students in years 4, 5 and 6 will be learning to play the recorder at our school as part of the Performing Arts programme.

Click on this link to listen to the pieces that you'll be learning. You will need a username and password which you will be told about in class. http://www.musick8.com/rkdojo/rksounds.php

If you wan't to practice your fingering, here is a useful chart to show you how! Click on this link to go to the web page.

This video shows Year 4 playing their recorders after a couple of lessons:

Fantastic Music Machine

A post over at learningIT , titled "Sound Art", sent me to this video:

"This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the
Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa.
Amazingly, 97% of the machines components came from
JOHN DEERE Industries and More.. Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft, Iowa.
YES, farm equipment!

"It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment,calibration, and tuning before filming this video, but as you can see, it was WELL worth the effort.
It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the
University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian."

The Typewriter Song

We've been using GarageBand in ICT...and there are two typewriters in the room....

The Typewriter Song

Interesting Orchestra Instruments

If you enjoyed the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, you'll be interested in these instruments, created by a musician in Japan:



Heita, who describes himself as a "Vegetable musician, Amateur poet" has posted 31 videos at YouTube of his various vegetable instruments: Burdock, Egg, Ostrich Egg, Carrot, Broccoli, Apple, Pumpkin, and Radish ocarinas, Cucumber trumpet, Carrot slide slide flutes, Radish slide flutes - an amazing variety of instruments!

Here's the Big Broccoli ocarina:

Button Beats

Visit a very interesting web page if you like to experiment with sound: Button Beats
Here are a few samples:


ButtonBeats.com



ButtonBeats.com




ButtonBeats.com

Click on this link to go to the web page and sample all the fun ways to create sound. (The pages have ads in the margins - be careful.)

Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration, featuring Itzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill

First, watch this interview by Michelle Miller with Yo Yo Ma:






This video is posted on YouTube

Next, listen to John Williams' new "arrangement" for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration, featuring Itzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill:




This video is on YouTube

String Ensemble

Listen to the first rehearsal of our new String Ensemble!

Year 5 Unit of Inquiry: Art and Artists

We have used The Barbers's Shop by Edward Hopper (1882-1967) as a stimulus for our work in PA lessons.


photo from Artnet

More about the Icicle Orchestra

In November we wrote about the Icicle Orchestra. Here's a slide show of musicians Terje Isungset and Arve Henriksenat in Lake Shikotsu, Hokkaido, Feb 2007, preparing and playing their ice instruments.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

We also found this picture of Terje Isungset "playing on a trumpetlike instrument made of ice at the official opening of the exhibition "Melting Ice - A Hot Topic" at The Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Tuesday, June 5,2007". (link)

Photo from AP Photo by ERLEND AAS

On this web page you can listen to sample of music from the new album, Hibernations, just released at the Ice Festival Gello, Norway. Here's 30 seconds from one of the tracks:

(If you like the ice music, you can buy his discs at Amazon.fr, Amazon.co.uk, or online at Listen to Norway.)

This video at the Guardian newspaper's web site shows Terje Isungset playing his instruments, talking about making them out of 2500 year old ice, and excerpts from his concerts.

We have a lot of ice around us right now...can you make an ice instrument? How would you hold it? How would you keep it from melting? Can you imagine what kind of sound will it make before you play it?