MYC Showcase at Chapters Ancaster: a Review

On March 21^st, eight MYC teachers from the greater Hamilton and Brantford area presented a showcase to demonstrate various aspects of the Music for Young Children program.  Cheryl Dickson-Neal was the MC for the event, which took place at the Chapters Ancaster store at 1 and 6 pm.  The teachers were joined by over 50 of their students in the presentations and solos.

Sherri Granka presented a section on solfege.  Assisted by Elizabeth Bogdan, she invited the audience to participate by singing and adding actions to tunes such as Fuzzy Wuzzy and Hot Cross Buns.  Sherri explained that, through solfege, children learn to distinguish between beat and rhythm, then go on to learn the hand signs for pitches to sing patterns and songs.  Eventually, the children take these songs to the keyboard and learn to transpose them into different keys through their knowledge of solfege.

Heather Tuttle presented some fun rhythm ensembles, including Waltzing Matilda and La Cucaracha, for one of which she had written the parts.  Accompanied by MIDI, students played castanets, hand drums, and maracas, each group reading the rhythms written on a poster held by one of the teachers (Elizabeth Bogdan, Michelle Friesen, Sandra Oldejans, Sue Van Wetten and Heather Tuttle).

With the assistance of Nora Phalen, Sherri presented a section on keyboard geography. Seven students were invited to stand on a vinyl floor keyboard and hold a puppet representing a key; an equal amount of children were asked to come up and hold a large keyboard letter corresponding to each puppet.  Children and audience then sang the Critter Song, which most beginning MYC students learn in their early lessons.  Assisted by Heather, the children then sang and performed the actions to the song We Can Move Our Fingers, which teaches right and left, or up and down, on the piano.

Heather presented a section on singing, illustrating how MYC students learn about crescendos.  She used a fan, which first looked like a “V” to the audience, then turned it sideways to show it was a “crescendo”.  As the fan opened up, so did the volume of singing.  The audience sang dynamically, becoming louder (and taller) as they sang their way through Crescendos are Such Fun.

A special aspect of Music for Young Children is composition.  Children learn various techniques that composers use to write songs, such as repetition, sequence, retrograde, and so on.  They then use these techniques to compose their own compositions.   Many children performed their own compositions for the audience, including such titles as Scary, Sneaker Cat, the Beatle Bug Boogie,  Déjà vu, and E Minor Fantasy.   Some compositions didn’t yet have titles: children in the audience enjoyed listening and making suggestions.

Many students, including students who had graduated from the program and were continuing their piano studies, performed solos.

The showcase concluded with a fun interactive listening game, led by Heather, who held up vocabulary cards for tempos such as Andante, Moderato, and Allegro to show the speeds at which children in the audience would dance.  Of course they had to freeze whenever the music stopped.

We teachers enjoyed showing the fun we have in our Music for Young Children classes and hope guests in the audience will be encouraged to come join us in the fall, when our program begins anew.

Thank you to students who participated in the sessions from my studio including Camilla, Mackenzie and Olivia.  Thanks also to Gavin and Lorelei, who performed solos, and Taif, who performed her own composition.  Well done, everyone!