Evolving a new work – Beethoven’s Big Day Out

I’ve just got home from leading family workshops for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven Festival. I led two projects – Beethoven’s Big Day Out, and a Jam on the Ode to Joy.

Jams for families on big orchestral works are a core part of my creative work and musical direction, but I was particularly thrilled to get to present Beethoven’s Big Day Out for WASO. It’s a project that has developed through a number of other projects, and it’s interesting to reflect how it evolved through these influences.

Preparing the participants for Beethoven’s Big Day Out

Beethoven’s Big Day Out has its origins in a Jam for Juniors I led for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2011, but that project employed ideas that I’d begun exploring in response to the very beautiful, detailed, and insightful work for pre-school children by Pocketfool Productions, and in particular a project that Jennifer Anderson from Pocketfool and I developed together for ArtPlay earlier in 2011 – the Camel Caravan (read about it here).

Working with Jen really changed my thinking about approaches to creative music work with under-5s. When we were developing our workshop, Jen talked about how she wanted to try and create language and opportunities around listening, and deliberate choices about sounds. We discussed how transformative that shift from a very self-focused, blocking-out-others way of playing to a more alert, aware, connected experience could be, even for very young players.

It was a beautiful project, with a big range of musical experiences for the children. In one lovely activity, children could “buy” sounds in a musical market place. They had to think about what kind of sound (a big sound, a shiny sound, etc) that they wanted, and then, after paying their money, they would play an instrument that made that sound.

This idea of careful, considered listening and choices then became central to the planning for the first Jam for Juniors with the MSO. I was a bit skeptical about the whole Jams for Juniors concept at first. There would be 50 little children, with their parents, in a large open space, with instruments. How could we get them all creating as well as playing, while ensuring musical integrity and variety, and not have everyone leave at the end of the 30 minute jam feeling assaulted by the cacophony?

The idea of a “journey”, which we’d used in the Camel Caravan, was a useful frame, so I utilised it here. Journeys require us to undertake different tasks. There is a sense of adventure and imperative about the different stages of the journey too. A journey through an imaginary environment gets the children’s creativity firing from the outset.

That first Jam for Juniors was strong. It involved way too many props to be practical (we changed multiple instruments and props five times in the half-hour workshop), but it offered a big variety of ways of engaging with music and instruments, all while introducing the music of Beethoven to the children and their parents, using themes from Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral Symphony.

Two further projects grew out of that Jam for Juniors experience, and both have become ‘flagship” projects for me in my stable of projects to offer to orchestras and arts centres around Australia and internationally. One is Nests (which I’ve written about here) and the other is Beethoven’s Big Day Out.

So what has changed in this most recent evolutionary phase? The bones of the original Jam for Juniors are still there. It is still a jam for under-5s, although we’ve narrowed it to an age range of 2-5 years. I’ve incorporated more opportunities for the children to get “up close” to the musicians from the orchestra and their instruments, so that they can feel the physicality and voice of the instruments, and the air vibrating in response. I’ve adjusted the language I use to introduce the different stages of the journey (adjusting and refining language is an ongoing process. It’s an aspect of workshop leading and facilitating that constantly fascinates me). And I removed quite a lot of the props! (Now we only have three changeovers).

Exploring instruments and interactions

An action shot from the Body Percussion storm!

Song and Dance with the orchestra

All ready for the first group of journey-makers!

The next thing I’d like to create is a ‘travelling’ version of Beethoven’s Big Day Out, where the participant group moves through different sites (such as a series of foyer spaces in a large performing arts centre) as part of the journey. If that sounds like something you’d like to present, let me know! But regardless of the site, Beethoven’s Big Day Out is a very imaginative, movement-filled, multi-sensory experience of a symphony orchestra, its music, and its sounds, that involves all of the children as participants in the music-making in many different, creative, and exhilarating ways. The singing, chattering voices, and bouncing little bodies in the foyer afterwards, and the smiles on parents’ and musicians’ faces, were testament to that.

And just another thing…

More on the joy of managerial speak. Weird Al Yankovic says/sings it better than anyone else. And the video is one of those wonderful live drawing efforts – an excellent asset in anyone’s communication tool box to facilitate engagement and maximise outcomes going forward.

When is a teacher not a teacher?

A friend told me that his job had recently been retitled. Employed as a salaried Head of Strings at a well-to-do private school, he and his colleagues, once known as instrumental music teachers, were now to be called Music Tuition Service Providers.

Photo Credit: nadia_the_witch via Compfight cc

Needless to say, he was bemused by the weasel words of the title. He thought service providers were companies, operating in multiple sites.

“The maintenance company that cares for the gardens – that’s a service provider!” he pointed out. “Someone handing out food at a catered event – that’s a service provider. One person can substitute for another without any real difference in output being noticed. The same isn’t true for one-on-one instrumental music tuition or ensemble direction.”

The adoption of new, multi-word, pompous albeit empty titles seems like bureaucracy gone mad, or smacks of someone wanting to be seen to be creating change. All bemusement aside though, my friend was also angry about the subtext, which he perceived as an undermining and devaluing of a skilled group of professionals, and reducing their status within the school structure. The downgrading of skilled positions in schools is a real problem, and part of a contemporary context in which ‘teacher-blaming’ and ‘school-bashing’ is rife. Despite the fact that my friend, and many of his colleagues, are trained and qualified teachers as well as highly-skilled professional musicians, “teachers” are increasingly understood as only being those that stand in front of a classroom, chalk in hand, working with large and predictable groups of students.

I would also be curious to know what other curriculum areas were having specialist teachers’ jobs retitled. I suspect that this decision may also reflect a downgrading of the value of arts education within this particular school, and within school education in general.

Some might say, what’s in a name? Nothing much at all – until that job title is what is used to exclude people from organisational dialogue, or to determine what people are paid. Can you see “Service providers” sitting at the same level as “teachers” on the school’s organisational map? During the next round of Enterprise Bargaining Agreements, can you imagine “service providers” being paid the same as “teachers”? I can’t.

We brainstormed some more weasel word retitling:

Schools become Education Service Providers

Students become Education Recipients (or maybe Education Service Recipients)

Parents become Education Recipient Support Workers

That last one is my favourite. Please share any other new titles you think of in the comments!

In the end, we wondered if he should just call himself an “expert consultant”, and charge accordingly.