Sunday, February 20, 2011

Listening Blog 2/22/11

Title: Sol y Sambra

Performers: District IV Honors Band

Orchestration: Symphonic Band Insrumentation

Origin: Spanish/American


The Schmid article speaks about strategies to incorporate world music into instrumental ensembles. My link is a recording of a Spanish March titled Sol y Sambra performed by a high school band. Im not sure if this piece was re-orchestrated for symphonic band or if it was originally written for this instrumentation. I thought it was a nice example of how a piece of multicultural music can be added on a concert program to expose student musicians to different cultures.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

2/15/11 Listening Blog

Title: Living in the Musical Moment Dhamra Jazz.

Artists: Vic Juris, Karttikeya, Lewis Porter, Badal Roy.

Orchestration: Piano, Guitar, Idiophones, Membranaphones (Tabla).

Origin: India

Chapter five of our textbook discusses different aspects of musical structure. My clip focuses on the concept of improvisation and I found this clip interesting because the artists talk about the origin of their music and how they integrate their different cultural beliefs within a musical structure. For example, the artists define Dharma as a "your path," and everyone has a different dharma. Composition and improvisation can be considered a part of being a person's path. When discussing the structure of the music, the artists describe it as predictable because there is a pattern of reoccurring chords and beats. I like to think of this music as the culmination of multiple people's dharmas in relation to the underlying musical structure.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Listening blog 2/8/11

Title: On a theme to dance" (Ge Wu Yin)
Artist: Liu Fang
Orchestration: Pipa (Chinese lute/guitar)
Culture: China

This weeks reading was on finding and incorporating authentic music in the classroom. I found an interesting video featuring Liu Fang on a chordaphone known as a Pipa. This live performance might be a form of authentic music I would incorporate into my classroom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UajvlVrWrI8