Children, Singing and Playing

A truly important part of the conference experience is the opportunity to attend performances of children's ensembles.  Choirs, Orff ensembles, movement and dance ensembles, from  every level of education have been part of conferences past.  This year there were fewer concerts, but the groups were spectacular and because of some serious schedule shifting, audiences were very large.

The Grace Christian School Recorder ensemble played in the conference theater to a standing room only crowd with folks standing outside the door.  The ensemble of middle and high school students performed for 30 minutes.  Most notably, they were joined by their school superintendent on the final song.

The rest of the children's performances that I caught at least parts of were three marimba band/orff ensembles.  Strangely enough there were no children's choirs this year.  I ran into Shirley McRae in the lobby of the DoubleTree and she pointed it to my attention.  Sadly, the cost of bringing an ensemble to the conference has diminished the number of groups that actually apply to attend and perform. Choirs are generally large and therefore expensive if they have to travel very far.   One point might well be that in all but two of the groups, singers were part of the ensemble.  This reflects a truer presentation of the Schulwerk perhaps, but leaves out a very special commodity and area of interest for the conference attendees.  I hope we'll see some choirs in Pittsburgh next year!

Brent with Director, Anita Edwards

The highlight performance for me from the children was the fantastic program presented by the Fremont H. Teed Elementary 6th Grade Orff Percussion Ensemble from Kuna, Idaho, directed by Anita Edwards.  They combined speech, orff instruments and singing in sparkling and fresh arrangements of Orff classics as well as newly composed tunes from composers currently publishing.  (Disclaimer: They performed six pieces written by yours truly.  I was delighted and thoroughly surprised!)

Their arrangements were student/teacher collaborations in the truest sense of Orff Schulwerk.  The orchestrations  were bubbly, and sparkled with the energy and enthusiasm of children led by a teacher in love with their music making, enjoying it thoroughly with spontaneous wonderment and joy.  This truly showed the essence of Orff Schulwerk.

The Fremont H. Teed Orff Ensemble