The Story of Hollywood, opera for children (2006)
Duration: 17’
Children’s unchanged voices and piano
Without commentary:
MP3 Player
Score excerpt
Libretto
Program
Premiere:
3rd and 4th grade students from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School, vocalists / Russell Nadel, pianist and conductor / Ms. Yozmin Draper, Principal Sandra Graves, James Harp, Phyllis Lloyd, and Tara Francke, principal faciliators
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School, Baltimore, MD
May 24, 2006
Performers featured in audio recording:
Same ensemble as premiere
Program Notes:
Create & Produce was an education and outreach project of the Baltimore Opera Company that received pilot funding in the spring of 2006. The Baltimore Opera Company selected Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School (PS 122), a Title I public elementary school located in north Baltimore City, for the trial run of this project, and hired me to be the composer/teacher-in-residence. I had the good fortune to work with a wonderful group of eighteen third- and fourth-graders, some (but not all) of whom were drawn from the school’s Gifted & Talented Education program. These students had little or no prior musical training of any sort.
Over the course of eight weeks, meeting for just over two hours per week, the students and I together accomplished a great deal:
1) We learned all about what opera is and the history of opera;
2) We wrote an original opera libretto;
3) We composed all the original music found in this score;
4) And we performed the opera for the school and the public.
These students, who had effectively no formal musical training prior to this project, brought remarkable creative energy to the project and composed nearly all the music found in this score themselves, with little help from me outside the harmonization of the songs and my conducting from the piano. This gave the students a very strong sense of ownership in the creative process and in their final production.
This project was also a marvelous opportunity for musical and cross-curricular teaching. While the students learned about opera, they also learned a lot about history, geography, mathematics, anatomy (singing posture), public speaking, diction, acting and stage gesture, stage production, the technique of singing correctly, folksong repertoire, and much, much more. It also exposed the students to a genre of music which they had not previously experienced, and generated an interest in both “new music” and “classical” or “concert” music that they almost certainly lacked before the project began.
While this pilot project was successful with a group of third- and fourth- graders (eight and nine years old), I believe that it could be equally successful with children a few years older and even (perhaps) a couple of years younger, with appropriate adaptations.
— May 2006