If there is a theme running through all the activities that have been blossoming in Music and Performing Arts across the Neighbourhoods, and yes the apple tree outside stage door is about to burst into flower, it would have to be collaboration. Individual skills and gifts don’t often have the opportunity to shine via a solo performance context, and most performance opportunities rely on the successful collaborative skills of others to enable a great performance outcome. The students have been enjoying Performing Arts warm up exercises which have been enormous fun, and provide a way of building skills for effective collaboration. The Instrumental Music Assembly helped students to understand that collaborative skills are a contributing factor for successful group performance, and that when everyone’s capacity lifts, especially with a few hundred pairs of audience eyes and ears tuning in, a group’s potential grows. Bravo and thank you to our fabulous Instrumental Music students for their performances in the IM Assembly at the end of Week 4. Please read on for more news!

As with all instrumental Music performances, the audience enjoys a great variety of musical styles from different eras, and it’s always a pleasure to hear songs we know, and to learn a bit more about them. There are many tunes that most of us have played, or associate with children’s toddler years. We mostly remember the melody, to which we probably sing the lyric of ‘Da, da, da…’ because, who can remember what the real words are? These are tunes that have travelled across the globe and have been acquired and adapted by different cultures. Lightly Row was originally an early 19th century German song Hänschen Klein, a story of a boy who leaves home for seven years and then returns. The melody scans to the Mother Goose rhyme of Lightly Row and as such found it’s way to America, and is now considered as a traditional American folk tune. Mark’s guitarists performed this tune as Little Bird, from another nursery song lyric ‘Little bird, have you heard’, or it could also be ‘Baby-bye, there’s a fly…’. The social history connected to our students’ music learning is fascinating and constantly invites reflection about how music operates in our lives.

Spanish Mackerel March is a Mark Viggiani original, specifically written to target beginner guitar ensemble/collaboration skills. With a number of accelerando (speeding up) repeats, students’ proficiency becomes the ticket to a more exciting performance, and the Year 2 students ticked that box, complete with ‘head banging’ Flamenco flare! D Jam is another IM teacher original which was performed by Emma, Anna and Kiko who are Xani’s senior violinists. The tune is basically a D major scale, played in 3 part harmony with toe-tapping rhythmic bowing. Without the presence of sheet music, this trio had all their focus on listening. Their playing was tight and confident, and their slow patient practise during lessons paid off. Learning to master intonation on a violin would have to be in the top five of most challenging aspects across instrumental learning. Playing in tune involves fractions of a millimetre and the students demonstrated their ability to adjust their tuning to one another. My thanks to all involved in the IM Assembly, and also to the Yr 56 photographers who took these photos.

We were treated to another ‘Tay-Tay’ hit, Blank Space, performed by Marcos and his guitar students, which was a great ‘opener’ to the assembly. It’s a song the students asked to learn and although it came with some learning challenges there was plenty of motivation to practise hard for the group. Astrid and Juanita played a beaut flute duet version of When the Saints go Marching In, which resonated more with our Aussie Rules Footy hearts than the American Civil War which is when the tune was first written. And to finish our program, we were treated to a swanky Jeepers Creepers sax trio with Huey, Tucker and Mitchell. Only a select few in the gym could sing you the lyrics to that tune from 1939, and although the tune famously once advertised sneakers, it was originally about ‘peepers’, as in a pair of stunning, hypnotising eyes!

There is a long tradition of theatre and drama groups using ‘Frozen Statues’ as acting warm up activities. Across the Neighbourhoods these have provided terrific brain breaks to learning, and are fun ways of collaborating to achieve a goal quickly through group work. The students begin by walking around the space casually. When asked to freeze, they do so and listen for the instructions which indicate how many students group together to make a particular object. There is no time to pick and choose as the last group to be ready sits out for the next round, but the bonus for them is that they choose the instructions for the next pose!

The other Performing Arts focus for this week is the singing for next week’s Father’s and Carer’s Day Assembly. The whole school has been enjoying singing Bill Wither’s Lean On Me, which will include our Red-capped Robins singing a harmony line. We will also have singing responses to Neighbourhood contributions from the combined Yr 34 Nghs and the Yr 2s. Isabella and I have so loved working with our school Italian Coro d’Oro, choir of gold, that we have asked the whole combined 34Nghs to prepare Puccini’s famous aria O Mio Babbino Caro. Some families with older siblings may remember back to pre-COVID times that the Yr 34s sang this aria for the same Assembly in 2017! It’s been a delightful study of how music and acting combine to tell a story, and the students have loved analysing a 1980’s video of the famous Italian opera star Renata Scotto, for her brilliant acting. There was an unanticipated prior knowledge hook though; the similarity between Scotto’s Italian Renaissance styled costume and the dress that Princess Fiona wears in Shrek, which led to other conversations! Isabella and I have loved how the learning of this aria has expanded the students’ vocabulary, and the 34s used a number of strategies to solve a translation puzzle for the aria. With the English libretto provided, the students collaborated to construct the Italian translation. This was impressive, and I can’t wait to hear them sing the aria with Liana Pirello accompanying them on the harp!

The Year 2 Ngh had such a great time learning a medley for the NAIDOC Week Assembly, that they have written lyrics and voted for two melodies to create their own tribute to Fathers and Carers. The thoughtfulness of their lyrics extends beyond our community and across generations: “And we know, not all of us have Dads. But we all have a special person take our hand, to help us to be a better person.” Sing this line to Bjork’s Cosmogony melody and it goes straight to the heart. Thanks to everyone for a wonderful two weeks, cheerio, Deb.