"Schafer Education Report" – music program lost to education cutbacks

CANADIAN VOICES

R. Murray Schafer Composer Residency Report (PDF)

Schafer Education Report (PDF)
the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. CHURCHILL PUBLIC SCHOOL … The school was losing its music program to education cutbacks …

Schafer in the Community

Three weeks of intensive work in the schools and the community accompanied Soundstreams Canada’s Canadian Voices concerts.

Leading composer and celebrated music educator, R. Murray Schafer worked with children as young 5 years as well as university students and teacher candidates.

Students at Ontario Institute of Studies in Education learn to compose for shoe quartet!

CONTEXT: The Canadian Voices Concerts

February 28 and 29, 2004
Metropolitan United Church
Barbara Frum Atrium, Canadian Broadcasting Centre (3 Concerts Total)
50 YEARS OF PROFESSIONAL CHORAL SINGING
R. MURRAY SCHAFER’S 70TH YEAR

PARTICIPANTS
Vancouver Chamber Choir (British Columbia); Jon Washburn, Conductor
Pro Coro Canada (Alberta); Richard Sparks, Conductor
Elmer Iseler Singers (Ontario); Lydia Adams, Conductor
Tafelmusik Chamber Choir (Ontario); Ivars Taurins, Conductor
Elora Festival Choir (Ontario); Noel Edison, Conductor
Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal (Québec); Christopher Jackson, Conductor
Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus, Ann Cooper Gay Conductor
Tõnu Kaljuste (Estonia), Principal Guest Conductor

Canadian Voices featured the World Premiere of R. Murray Shafer’s monumental work for six choirs and children’s choir

The Fall Into Light

Commissioned by Soundstreams Canada through the kind assistance of the Michael Koerner Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council

CHURCHILL PUBLIC SCHOOL

Soundstreams staff was contacted by a parent of a student at Churchill Public School. The school was losing its music
program to education cutbacks and this concerned parent hoped that Soundstreams could include the school in its educational and outreach program. While Soundstreams’ programs are geared to work with music educators and not replace them Churchill was priorized for the next available project. Two Sessions on creative listening and creating with sound involved students from Grade 1-3 and Grade 4-5. 90 students in all participated with composer R. Murray Schafer on the morning of January 12, 2004

Forest Run School

Two Sessions on creative listening and creating with sound involving 60 students from Grade 3-4 and Grade 4-5.
Students learned to find objects by their sounds and explored coordinating counting with sound and physical movement.
Students interpreted sounds in stories.

Students at Churchill Public School participate in Schafer listening and sound activities

January 13 OISE- Session with 20 music teachers-in-training in the elementary school stream, and January 16 OISE— Session with 20 music teachers-in-training in the secondary school stream, both sessions under the auspices of Professor Lee Willingham R. Murray Schafer introduced the teacher candidates to his instructional methods through experiential sessions.

Joyce Public School

Two Sessions on creative listening and creating with sound involving 34 students from Grade 1-3 and Grade 4-5. Students explored the cadences and tones of their own names in sound and movement, told stories through sound and learned to listen to their environment.

Withro Public School

Elementary school sessions with 3 music classes, totaling 100 students. Students learned to hone their listening skills.

Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus,

During January, R. Murray Schafer worked with the young singers of the Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus, introducing work on Fall Into Light. This new composition to be presented at the Canadian Voices gala involved the participation of the young singers in a key role in the finale of the performance.
Branksome Hall and Pro Coro Canada Workshop

Branksome Hall Senior Choir prepared the R. Murray Schafer work, Minawanka. They presented the work and were coached by Pro Coro conductor, Richard Sparks.

Earl Haig Secondary School

Earl Haig students worked on R. Murray Schafer’s, Felix’s Girls welcoming the composer to their school. Students were also introduced to Schafer chants developed as part of the composer’s Wolf Project

 

ACTIVITIES WITH COMMUNITY CHOIRS

Bach Youth Chorus, Scarborough 20 Member Community Youth Chorus in workshop with R. Murray Schafer. This choir composed of young singers from 14 to 20 participated in an evening of Schafer exercises and chants.

Hart House Singers

This Toronto University Choir is open to everyone in the university community who wants to sing. The inclusive choir this season chose to include Schafer’s Epitaph for Moonlight, taking advantage of the opportunity to enrich the experience for choir members by working with the composer himself. During the composer’s visit, he shared the inspiration behind the work and guided the choir in understanding the graphic notation in which it is composed. The choir will be bringing the work to performance for their annual concert at the conclusion of the academic year.

 

A FILM INTRODUCTION TO SCHAFER SCORES

Narrated by the composer, a short film created for the occasion of Canadian Voices by CBC, introduced the viewer to the beauty of Schafer scores. Played continuously in the Graham Spry theatre during the Canadian Voices production week, it was viewed as the final stop on tours available to education program participants.

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Pupils sing the blues over music education cutbacks

Pupils sing the blues over music education cutbacks

JEANNE PENGELLY  /  Examiner Education Writer
Local News – Tuesday, May 08, 2007 @ 00:00

The bands played on … outside Kenner Collegiate yesterday as about 100 young musicians gathered to celebrate one of their favourite pastimes.
They piped up to mark the third annual Music Monday – a day when school bands and choirs across the country make music simultaneously to raise awareness of music education in schools.
Many choirs and bands in the city and county played and sang in their respective schools yesterday as others from corners around the country did the same.
Music should be a pillar of education, said Coalition of Music Education in Canada executive director Ingrid Whyte.

“There’s such a huge focus these days on literacy and numeracy. Music and the arts are being sacrificed,” Whyte said. “Music programs are under siege across the country.”
The biggest problems happen in elementary schools where funding fails to supply trained music teachers.
Music is instead taught by classroom teachers regardless of their training.
“Would you want your Grade 4 student to be taught math by someone not qualified?” Whyte said.
What’s needed is more money and resources, she said, but even that is not enough.
Kenner Intermediate School teacher Deryck Robertson, who has taught music for eight years, said the program struggles to pay for new equipment or repair old instruments.
“But it’s so important. Music is a language that’s spoken everywhere,” Robertson said.
A new clarinet ranges from $300 to $500, he said, and a new baritone is more than $2,000.
“We go to the community so many times. You can only go back and ask for so much,” Robertson said.
One of his pupils, Tanner Swann, 13, said music adds something to her education. She started playing the trombone last year in Grade 7.
“It’s something I can put a little bit of me into,” she said. “Without music, we couldn’t really function. It is everywhere.”
Parent Sue Moser said she considers music education crucial. jpengelly@peterboroughexaminer.com 

Music programs in tune, ‘untrained’ teachers help
Editorial – Thursday, May 10, 2007 @ 00:00

Re “Pupils sing the blues over music education cutbacks” (May 8)
As one of the co-coordinators of this musical event at Kenner Intermediate School, I am proud of the way all the students performed at our Music Monday Concerts. After weeks of rehearsals, they were able to play with emotion and have fun. Performing and fun were our foci of the day, but unfortunately, the headline for the article and the story that followed put a negative spin on the event, focusing on funding issues.

Like the article said, Music Monday is meant “to raise the awareness of music education in schools;” however, the article failed to mention that there were three bands participating at our concert (Kenner Intermediate, Lakefield Intermediate and Lakefield Grade Nine bands, under the direction of Lisa Quackenbush) and one school choir from Kawartha Heights under the leadership of Heather Robertson. Before performing at Kenner, the three bands, along with the Lakefield High School band under the direction of Rob Roy, played an outdoor co
I would also like to clear up the funding issue that was raised by Ingrid White of the Coalition of Music Education in Canada. University teacher education faculties supply trained teachers, not boards of education. If trained music teachers are not coming out of universities, boards cannot hire them. And for the record, I am not a “trained music teacher,” just a classroom teacher who happens to be a musician. Should I not be teaching music? Maybe Ingrid White believes so.
Last year I was provided funding by our board to purchase some new instruments. Did it go far? No, but it’s a start. Yes, we’d all like more money to run our programs, but that should not have been the main story on this day. Congratulating and supporting the children on a job well done is
DERYCK N. ROBERTSON Spillsbury Drive

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music education fundraising campaign – Ontario Education

Fundraiser aims to bring music to schools

Updated Thu. Sep. 9 2004 7:19 AM ET

Canadian Press

TORONTO — After learning that Sean Jones’s middle school didn’t have an adequate music program, his father compelled the young boy to join a marching band at a local community centre.

Years after playing his trumpet in that band, Sean Jones is better known as Smooth, the alto in Toronto-based In Essence, a Juno-winning R&B quintet. “That’s what kept me going,” he said at the launch of a music education fundraising campaign to bring awareness to what advocates call eroding school programs.

“We’re trying to convince this country’s highest officials and maybe even the greater population of the importance and seriousness of (music education cutbacks).”

Part of Vinyl, a posh music and fashion exhibit at Holt Renfrew’s nine stores across Canada, the charitable event hopes to raise upwards of $50,000 so schools can replace shabby instruments or hire music teachers.

“They had a small music class in my senior public school but it wasn’t intensive. There was no direction,” added Jones following the official event, which took place at Holt’s stylized cafe.

Hoping to inspire the wealthy to empty their pockets, the store will host a silent auction at a swanky invite-only party in Toronto next Tuesday, tied in with the city’s star-studded film festival.

Up for grabs are one-of-a-kind clothing items by notable designers like Stella McCartney, Juicy, DSquared2, DKNY, Lida Baday, Nicole Miller and Diane von Furstenberg, among others. Bids are also being taken for a Duchamp tie autographed by Elvis Costello, a trip to a Giorgio Armani fashion show in Milan, and a Fender guitar autographed by Martin Scorsese.

As well, the retailer, known for carrying high-end designer garb, will donate two per cent of national sales on Oct. 2 to two organizations, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and the Coalition for Music Education in Canada.

With school starting, Melanie Berry, president of the recording academy, says the fortunate students will be hemming and hawing over which instrument to play in music class.

But hordes of others don’t have that option because their schools had to cut music programs to save money.

Berry says her organization, the one behind the annual Juno Awards, hears from dozens of schools every year who are using decaying instruments, don’t have sheet music or trained teachers.

“The stories would make you cry,” she said. “Some use ice cream buckets for drums and duct-taped trombones. There’s instruments that are 25 years old where 200 students are sharing reeds. It’s quite shocking when you start to get involved and hear more about it,” she said.

Both organizations hope the trendy Vinyl campaign, which runs through Oct. 2, will help raise awareness that music makes kids smarter. Each believes that developing a student’s creativity is just as important as math and reading skills.

“It may sound shmaltzy but I truly believe that making music makes us a better citizen,” said Ingrid Whyte, from the coalition, a citizens’ group based in Agincourt, Ont.

“Frankly, in a lot of schools, music isn’t being taught at all. Leading corporations around the world value creativity and innovation more than anything and music is a contributor to that. It’s an act of intelligence not just a contributor to intelligence.”

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