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Mozart’s Castle by Reese Gubka, age 8, a student in Laura Kimble’s Third Grade class at Horseshoe Trails Elementary School.
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A few minutes of music each morning. If there was a chance you’d get lifelong joy, the command of a universal language, increased mental acuity and cultural comprehension, and a day that goes more smoothly by listening to classical music for a few minutes every day, would you try it?
That’s what 175 elementary school classes in five school districts in metro Phoenix/Scottsdale and the North Valley are doing with Musicfest Minutes. Musicfest Minutes utilizes the Brummitt Taylor Music Listening Program to engage students in music and its association with writing, visual arts, music and history. Most importantly, it teaches children to listen.
“It’s difficult to find a program like this. This kind of a program is a beautiful gift” said Laura Kimble, Third Grade teacher at Horseshoe Trails Elementary School in the Cave Creek Unified School District, describing Musicfest Minutes.
Every day, the students listen to a music selection for fifteen minutes. (Only three to five minutes daily are required for the program to work.) Kimble uses a Brummitt Taylor script to introduce and reinforce information about the selection, its composer and cultural context of the music. “It doesn’t go in one ear and out the other. The music engages your mind. It’s very visual. When you hear Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons,’ you hear the summer forest fires roaring. You hear the rhythms and sound of winter.” In an era with constant aural bombardment, children need to learn how to listen, discern meaning, and create images from what they hear.
“Every Friday, I play the music twice” explains Kimble, “then the students draw a picture and write about the music. Reese Gubka is proud of this drawing, his vision of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music). I told the children there wasn’t TV or radio in Mozart’s time, so the wealthy commissioned music which would be played for their guests after a special meal. Reese decided that the guests would have had to bring a rose in order to attend the concert.”
Mozart came to Reese by way of Vancouver, Canada. In 1984, when David Brummitt was a music specialist in a small school In Langley, outside Vancouver, “I was looking for a way to connect my students to the world-wide celebration of Bach’s 300th birthday.” There was a six week school-wide celebration, with regular music listening sessions and concerts, leading up to Bach’s Birthday party. “Afterwards, as we gathered to eat left-over cupcakes and talk about how well everything had gone, one of the teachers asked, ‘So, what are you going to play next week?’ The consensus was ‘Yes, continue, but with other composers.’” Next was Mozart, then Vivaldi.
After observing David’s success with the concept, the district’s elementary music consultant, Karen Taylor, introduced the program which now bears their name, into the entire school district. By 1989, 32 schools out of 34 in the district, 10,000 students, were using BT. Brummitt estimates that it is now used by more than a half-million children in Canada, the U.S., Great Britain, Ireland, Indonesia, India, Australia, the Philippines, and Mexico.
“Music is a universal language, a means of communication and expression, a way of connecting people that crosses all cultures and countries.” Using BT increases the effectiveness of music classes, especially in the face of a reduced schedule of music in schools due to budgetary constraints. By the time the children actually study music and are asked to discuss a piece, they’ve already heard it five times which yields a meaningful discussion.
Some teachers become enthusiastic supporters of the program for reasons having nothing to do with music education. “One teacher with a particularly rambunctious class resisted introducing this new program. She had a routine, developed over 20 year of teaching, and she was afraid to disrupt this routine which had worked successfully for her” recalls David Brummitt. “After six weeks, she noticed a change in behavior. The students were calmer and more focused when she started the day with fifteen minutes of music. They were listening and processing oral instructions better. There were fewer reports of problems with classmates. She thought it was wonderful, and wanted to continue.”
The use of the Brummitt Taylor program has spread, Johnny Appleseed fashion, as more teachers use it and take it with them as they go to a new school district, or as its effectiveness in one class is noticed by teachers in another.
Elementary schools in the Cave Creek, Paradise Valley, Deer Valley, Scottsdale School Unified School Districts and Phoenix School District #1, are taking advantage of Musicfest Minutes. “Our goal is to get young children to listen to the greatest music of all time” says Pat Cohen, Arizona Musicfest 2006-2010 Education Chair, “and to educate them in the hopes they will become the classical concert goers of the future.”
Arizona Musicfest has provided Brummitt Taylor CDs, boom boxes and scripts to schools since 2002, when the Brummitt Taylor program was introduced to Arizona Musicfest by its founder Paul Perry, now retired, who saw it being used successfully in Grass Valley, California, where he was the artistic director of Music in the Mountains for 25 years.
If your child’s school does not use Musicfest Minutes, you could suggest to a favorite teacher or principal that they contact Arizona Musicfest to learn more about it. The organization welcomes inquiries.
Whether your school uses Brummitt Taylor or another music listening system, you can play classical music for your children at home or in the car. Music is a gift that every child deserves to receive.
By Vickilyn Hussey, reprinted with permission from artZbeat magazine
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© 2010 Arizona Musicfest. All rights reserved.
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