Basically, changing the world
Two exciting updates this week:
An incredible article in the Durham Herald about the power of volunteerism and the can-do spirit KidZNotes supporters have. To quote, we are “Basically, changing the world!”
Brighter Future Hits High Note
The Durham Herald Sun
Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan
Also, we have an update from Ben Fuller! Ben will be interning with KidZNotes this fall, and is spending the summer immersed in El Sistema Scotland.
From Big Noise: Sistema Scotland, here’s Ben Fuller:
Greetings! I’m currently in Stirling, Scotland working with Sistema Scotland’s
first nucleus, Big Noise Raploch. In order to give a wider understanding of Sistema’s global reach and a sort of “what’s to come” to KidZNotes in Durham, I’ll be reporting occasionally on my experiences here. Today was the first day of a month-long summer school for about 120 kids in Raploch. Raploch is the area just behind Stirling Castle where Big Noise delivers instruction during the school year for just over 200 children in their after-school program.
A team of 16 musicians (8 of whom started working yesterday) representing all areas of a symphony orchestra—strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion—lead the young classical musicians in full orchestras, sectionals, chamber groups, and choir. Currently all of the children play a stringed instrument, but winds, brass, and percussion are all to be introduced this summer.
Today, the children broke up into four orchestras—Purple, Orange, Red, and
Rinconada (named for Raploch’s sister-nucleus in Venezuela)—and jumped straight into rehearsal. The Purple orchestra is made up of the youngest kids (5-6 years), so they began working on learning the open strings of their instruments with help from the Red orchestra. The premiere Rinconada group (8-10 years) began sight-reading sheet music, a dramatic improvement from last year’s summer school. The children also rehearsed chamber music, played musicianship games, and welcomed the new teachers.
I got the chance to participate in Take a Musician Home for Tea—a miniature
concert in the living room of any kid who signs up. Ysla, Josif, and I went to a nursery- school boy’s house and played a few traditional Scottish tunes before he showed his mom the songs and activities he had been learning in Big Noise Nursery. TAMHFT is a great way to get the whole community—children, parents, grandparents, and neighbors—involved with Big Noise.
Last weekend, we put a few of the kids on a bus to Perth to see the National
Children’s Youth Orchestra of Scotland in concert. They played Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead, Kodàly’s Peacock Variations, and Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band Overture. Our kids were great audience members—in spite of the fact that Perth Concert Hall has some of the squeakiest audience seating anywhere—and really enjoyed seeing children only a few years older than them playing such difficult repertoire.
Earlier in the week, Carolyn Sparey came in to work with the children. She is a former principal violist of the Scottish National Orchestra and the BBC SSO, and she played a movement from a Bach Cello Suite and a piece she composed after watching her son at a skateboard park in Paris. The kids enjoyed learning some of the effects she included in her piece: slides, left-hand pizzicato, col legno bowing, and more. A few of the kids decided to write their own pieces, so we’ll see how that turns out.
Hopefully this serves as a good introduction to Big Noise’s summer school.
Thanks for reading and supporting KidZNotes!
Ben
Filed Under: News & Events
