Amazing Day At The NJSMA’s John Feirabend Workshop! Amy Burns Far Hills Country Day School aburns@fhcds.org
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n Monday, October 12, the New Jersey School of Music Association (NJSMA), co-sponsored with GIA Publications, INC (http://www. giamusic.com), presented a workshop featuring John Feierabend, leading authority on vocal and movement development in children. This sold out workshop was fabulous. I came away with a rejuvenation of musical ideas and assessments. John had us moving and singing right from the start. He presented his research in a way that made everyone in the room comprehend everyone’s musical abilities from the infant stage. John showed how students can always sing in their head voices if we pitched our songs in the key of F or higher because children have the ability to sing in head voices with notes as low D above middle C. He showed amazing examples from his wife Lillie’s music classroom. One of the best items that I adored when watching Lillie’s classroom was that it was a “real” classroom with examples of some students singing perfectly on pitch and some students being too shy to sing at all. John was showing us how to assess singing voices, which was exemplary because many of us must show assessments throughout the school year. Finally, John presented his First Steps in Music curriculum and showed us what it means to prepare children to be musical in three ways: Tuneful (thinks tunes), Beatful (feels beats and meters), and Artful (responds to expressive qualities of music). When we prepare children to be musical, it leads to children becoming adults who can sing “Happy Birthday;” rock their babies to the beat while singing lullabies; can clap their hands in time; and are moved by music. The First Steps curriculum is a musical workout that occurs in eight sections: 1. Pitch Exploration (Vocal Warm-ups) 2. Fragment Singing 3. Echo Songs 4. Call and Response Songs 5. Simple Songs 6. Arioso (Child created tunes) 7. Songtales 8. Movement Exploration (Movement Warm-ups) 9. Movement for Form and Expression 10. Movement with the Beat John gave excellent examples and activities from each stage. To find out more about Feirerabend’s First Steps in Music, please visit GIA Publications at https://www.giamusic. com/music_education/johnfeierabend-main.cfm. In addition, there is a Facegroup Book (https://www.facebook.com/groups/feierabendfundamentals/) for those who are using Feirerabend’s materials such as FirstSteps, Conversational Solfege, Move It!, and more. On this Facebook page, you will see wonderful videos posted by the amazing Missy Strong Smith, of activities that are featured in the materials mentioned above. The workshop also included a beautiful performance by Sola Voce of the New Jersey Youth Chorus, directed by Tara Postigo, a folk dancing session presented by Missy, and an iPad session which I presented.
TEMPO 46
JANUARY 2016
