The Tykes have Parents

This is the first in a series of catching up blogs. I know you want to know about the performance, but I'm starting with Parent's open music day at school last week, because it is chronologically the first thing I need to catch up on- and that's just how I roll...


So parents day: I was nervous. Why was I nervous? Because all the stories I hear in the staff room are about parents being awful and meddling, and though I love their kids- I didn't want to be hauled out in to a hallway and forced to explain myself and why I was being such a rubbish music teacher. So I was nervous.

For the nursery children we sang Kalele, My Minibeast Friends, Tiny Caterpillar on a Leaf, Simama Ka and I am the Music Man which is a handy song because it takes quite a while for the kids to all get their instruments and settle down. The first class was bouncing off the walls in anticipation of the parents being there- so instead of being in class we had the performance/open class in the hall/cafeteria. There were a lot of parents so we sang Kalele which is a welcome song to all the parents. We sang for Mommies, Daddies, Nannies, Brothers, Sisters, and by particular demand: babies. We sang My minibeast friends which involves crouching on the floor and it was amusing to see the couple of children who just stood there the whole time- a little bit shell shocked by the audience ranging around them. In tiny caterpillar we had a good range of spinning into butterflies, and with Music Man I had the genius idea of handing out instruments to the little brothers and sisters in the room as well. I think we got them all back...

So that class went splendidly and was a wonderful success and a great way to actually start the day. The time went by much more quickly than I had expected it to. In the later nursery classes we got a big laugh when we got to the verse in My Minibeast Friends where the tykes had named their own insects "Princess the Butterfly" and "Darth Vader the Cricket"

At lunchtime I got a call saying that my own parents had arrived so I went and collected them and got them set up with food before heading back down to teach the reception children. In reception we only had one song to perform so I had another song to teach in order to show what that process was like. In the future I will have multiple songs to perform, but live and learn. The next time I have to do something like this will be for the Christmas Show in the Winter. Should be good times.

Some of the reception kids we charming with the announcement of their parents "My Daddy is in the blue shirt! Back there! Hi Daddy! Miss Casey, did you see my Daddy?" and also stopping the class halfway through to announce very clearly and precisely that they needed the toilet and could they go use the toilet now?

Anyhow- the end of the story is this: I got rave reviews from the parents, had a wonderful time with the tykes, and AND at the end of music club (which was very low key- I was exhausted) one of the parents brought me chocolates and flowers: this big beautiful bouquet that she handed me after she handed me the chocolates. I didn't understand that they were for me and once I finally figured it out, I was shocked! Flattered, but shocked. Beautiful flowers with sage in the arrangement so it smelled lovely.

tykalicious

The weather here has been humid, warm, and basically very summery. So today for school I decided to wear a summer dress which necessitated shaving my legs. You know how I've been losing things? Yeah, my lack of attention also meant that I ended up cutting the crap out of my legs....

So I was covered in band aids today and the tykes? They're short. So those band aids? They were at eye level. I was trying to be all subtle about it- covering my legs with the skirt of my dress and not pointing them out at all. But the tykes? They notice things. So we had to have a talk about safety because between my crutches and all the band aids the tykes are a bit concerned that I'm not doing a good enough job safety wise.

In other news: parents' open music day is next week. This means that the parents get to come in an watch me teach their kids. I'm a bit nervous. We've been practicing performing in the classes because apparently part of open music day is that the kids perform a song. But it is also supposed to be a regular music class? And we would never perform a song in regular music class? So how much do I try to show the parents- "hey look! Your kids can stand in a line and sing!" Or "hey look! Your kid is running around the room like a hyena and suggesting things like that we should have a grasshopper named Darth Vader!" And really, I want to have both. So we'll give it a go. I think I'll aim to have way too much to cover just in case everything takes a very short amount of time.

The nursery kids are way better at performing than their older brethren the reception kids. Does this seem weird to you? It seems weird to me. Also, it always fascinates me how differently the classes respond to the same activity. We've been doing a vocal warm up which involves chewing imaginary bubble gum, saying "MMmm" up high and down low, and then rubbing the popped bubble gum all off our bodies. Some classes get *really* into it calling out all the names of the body parts they know, and others are like "I am in my bubble...it does not pop." (I always envision them in gerbil balls when they do that. How funny would that be? Tyke sized gerbil balls?)

You know what the problem is with the reception tykes song? Why they're not good at performing? (This just occurred to me) It's a boring song. They don't like it. (Or maybe *I* don't like it and that gets obvious...) Eh, the energy will be completely different next week anyway- parents and an audience will throw everything on to a different level. Wish us luck!

Mothers' day: UK style

The US and the UK have different days for celebrating mother's day and for the UK that day is the 2nd of March. So for Mommy I decided that the best gift would be to accompany her to Heathrow and carry as many bags as possible. To be fair, I would have done this regardless- but isn't it handy to have it fit in so nicely with a holiday?

We had a very nice visit after she came back from Amsterdam. Latana was nice enough to loan me her air mattress- so in spite of having very little floor space due to a surplus of instruments and suitcases- both of us were able to stay in my flat at Sundial Court. The air mattress wasn't as bad as I had feared, but I think I need to invest in a second pillow...

Mommy arrived back in London on Thursday evening just in time to watch my first jazz/pizzicato technique lesson with Nathan and then Creative Ensemble. The lesson was fantastic and fun and I'm really looking forward to working with Nathan on our next couple of lessons before Easter break. In Creative Ensemble we worked on a riff exercise that involved each of us choosing three spaces to place a note in a cycle of 8 beats and then repeating that. What develops is a generally pretty funky, if a tonal, riff. Nathan then had us transpose up a minor third, up another minor third, down a semi tone, and back to the original. This was more than a little confusing but we rose to the task admirably.

After that Emma and I each had our turns to lead a short 45 minute workshop with material that we created. Emma worked a short 2 chord pattern and melody and it was nice. I like her aesthetic. I brought in a clip from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "On the Mountain Top" speech that I had transcribed.

I originally got interested in the speech when we were working on our Earth piece for the Globetown project. I was interested in how incredibly musical his voice and phrase structure was so I tried to figure out if I could accurately transcribe the pitches his voice was hitting in the speech. I chose a short section where he listed places in the world where people were rising up and fighting for freedom. The list centres around g#, a#, b, and sometimes d. Once you start listening for the pitches it becomes more and more difficult not to hear the entire 45minute long speech as a song. I wasn't totally sure what to do with the material- but I was certain that it was ripe for working with in some way.

I played the section of the speech for everyone and assigned a certain place name (Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Akra, Ghana; Memphis, Tennessee; etc.) to each musician. We listened to the clip a few times to make sure that everyone could play the inflections that MLK had used (and deliberated a bit about whether or not they agreed with the transcription I had come up with) Nathan kept the pulse on a shaker and we tried playing around with what order to have the place names come in. We ended up with a very short structure moving around the room in pairs and having a sort of chorus of everyone playing "Memphis, Tennessee" because that was the most rhythmic and fun to play. I'm sorry, I don't have a recording of it to play for you. But hopefully I'll get the opportunity to play around some more with the material- Kate was saying that she could see it becoming a fairly substantial piece involving video as well...

Anyhow- after all of that I think Mommy enjoyed herself but is still a bit perplexed about what exactly it is that we're doing here in Leadership town. Oh well, we're a bit perplexed at times too. It comes with the territory.