- Southeast Asian Choral Music – Tracy Wong
- If curiosity killed the cat, who killed curiosity? – Andrew Pennay
- Sweat Like an Artist – Classical Music Workouts
- Musical Thinking while Listening – Ruth Friend & Davina McClure
- All Voices in Harmony: Inclusive practices in the Primary Music Classroom – Tess Laird
- Research: Popular Music in Kodaly-Inspired Teaching for Kindergarten and Year 1 Students – Rachel Cox
- Research: Reviving Creativity and Self-Expression in Classical Music through Improvisation – Peter Doublinszki
Session 3
Session 3 Day 4
12:00 - 12:55
12:00 - 12:55
This session focuses on the unique folk-inspired choral repertoire for treble choirs by Southeast Asian music creators (composers & arrangers) that captures their lived experiences. Through healthy vocal approaches, it will also be a discovery on the flexibility of the collective singing voice in tone, expression, and storytelling.
In historicising and problematising Australia’s national instinct to devalue artistic curiosity through our state-based syllabi, we must embrace a creative way forward for Kodály-based music programs in primary and secondary contexts. Ever curiouser and curiouser, and with eight lives remaining, the feline bites back in this session, providing eight strategies for embracing curiosity in the music classroom. Through the lens of Ron Ritchhart’s cultural forces, we examine our own pedagogical practices to find playful opportunities for wonder, awe and excitement when performing and responding to culturally diverse repertoire. In considering our use of time, the way we interact with students, our assessment practices, our language moves, and even our physical environment, let’s push for genuine inquisitiveness as music learners come to value historically under-represented voices. We’ve still got eight more shots at this.
Got the Day 4 wriggles? Come dressed for a 45-minute workout to a mix tape of classical hits, led by musicians who like to move. Our workouts have been enjoyed by community groups, musicians, non-musicians, primary school students and high school students alike, and are designed to draw you into the world of classical music through your muscles and your heart. Includes: cardio, resistance, boxing, dance, high impact and low impact options. Also includes: Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Khatchatourian, Kats-Chernin, Sculthorpe and more…
*Please bring appropriate attire for a workout. We will start this session 5 minutes later than scheduled to give you time to change
What does musical thinking look like in your classroom? This session will explore new and innovative ways to listen to Art Music while interpreting meaning and responding artfully. Responding to music through listening, movement and the use of visual listening maps builds practical experiences and opens the ears and hearts of all students.
We will share ways for children to explore, analyse, interpret and think creatively in the Primary music classroom. This interactive pedagogical workshop will include instructional procedures that enhance the working memory and avoid cognitive overload.
In today’s primary music classroom every class contains students with a wide range of diverse needs. This diversity will include physical disabilities and medical conditions, diagnosed/undiagnosed neurological and intellectual differences, experiences of trauma, poverty, racial and religious segregation, varying linguistic backgrounds, and many other issues which may impact learning. With hundreds of students, it can be overwhelming as a specialist teacher to support these varied considerations for individuals in our classes. Continuing to teach a sequential developmental music program while catering to so many diverse needs is a constant challenge. In this workshop some very simple techniques to practise inclusion and differentiation will be demonstrated and discussed.
Research: Popular Music in Kodaly-Inspired Teaching for Kindergarten and Year 1 Students
- This research / paper session will include two papers in the one session
Kodály’s beliefs that music for education should come from the ‘musical mother-tongue’ of the children being taught, and that teachers should use ‘music of the highest quality’ in the classroom have left the place of popular music in the Kodály classroom in question. While many Kodály teachers consider that popular music does not meet Kodály’s standard of ‘quality’, it inarguably is a large part of the musical mother tongue of today’s children. Furthermore, parallels between the sound-before-sight model of the Kodály philosophy and informal learning processes used by popular musicians mean that popular music pedagogy and Kodály pedagogy are in many ways mutually compatible. This paper presentation will discuss the preliminary results of an ethnographic dual case study investigating how children in Kindergarten and Year 1 respond to Kodály-inspired teaching when popular music is the primary source of musical material, when compared to a traditional Kodály approach using folk and children’s songs.
Research: Reviving Creativity and Self-Expression in Classical Music through Improvisation
- This research / paper session will include two papers in the one session
Classical music education is facing criticism for its perceived failure to nurture creativity, self-expression, and the development of unique artistic identities. The art of improvisation, which historically played a central role in Western classical music, has been identified as a powerful tool to address these issues. However, from the end 19th century, classical musicians witnessed a significant shift in focus, nearly erasing improvisation from classical music recitals.
Today, there is a resurgence of interest in improvisation among classical musicians, driven by a desire to foster creativity, self-expression, and the cultivation of distinct artistic identities. However, a formidable challenge arises as most classical music educators lack the expertise needed to teach this skill effectively.
This presentation explores the connection between the revival of improvisation in classical music and the jazz methodology, notably bebop, which is typically not associated with the Kodály method. It emphasises the integration of Kodály principles into the learning process for improvisation, offering practical insights into building a rich musical vocabulary from baroque to bebop and everything in between. This presentation seeks to inspire classical musicians to embrace improvisation as a means of revitalising their creative expression and unique artistic identities within the realm of classical music.