EMFkids: Thursday, week 2

We had another exciting morning at EMFkids today.  Our musical style of the day was the Romantic Period, and we listened to a fancy virtuoso piece by Franz Liszt.  Later in the morning we visited the woodwind section of the orchestra, then returned to finish making our own French horns.  This was a popular activity, although many campers had a difficult time making a sound on their horns.  It's much harder than the recorders we've been playing all week!

Other highlights of the day include learning to read some rhythmic notation and adding another level of complexity to our ensemble pieces.  Today we got four different parts going with instruments and voices!

Tomorrow is our last morning of camp, and we'd like to thank all the parents and families for sharing your children with us.  Remember we'll be meeting at the Music Academy at our regular time (8:45/9am), but parents are invited to return at 11:30 to join us for the last half hour of camp.
Hope you all have had a great week, and we look forward to seeing you all in the morning.

-'Miss Susannah'
Susannah Steele 

Watch our Interview with pianist William Wolfram

We sat down with EMF faculty pianist William Wolfram to talk about piano, sports, and his upcoming performance of the Liszt Concert No. 1. Take a look:

EMFkids Visit the Orchestra

Yesterday our EMFkids Campers visited the Young Artist Orchestra and met the percussion family. Watch a few minutes of their visit as conductor Thomas Hong and the Young Artist percussionists introduce their instruments.

EMFkids: Wednesday, Week 2

Today at EMFkids we continued to learn about the different style periods in Western music, and today we learned about the Classical period.  Everyone got to hear music by Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, and we also acted out the story of Mr. Haydn and his Surprise Symphony.

The brass section introduced us to each of their instruments: we saw and heard music from the French horns, trumpets, trombones, bass trombone, and tuba.  Later we got to use our own instruments outside while we practiced on the recorder and explored various percussion instruments.

Each day we have added a level of complexity to the musical activities for the campers, and they have handled the challenges well.  They have learned about and participated in two and three part singing, following a conductor, and practiced playing a variety of instruments.

We have exciting plans for musical and art projects, and we'll look forward to seeing you then.

-'Miss Susannah'
Susannah Steele

EMFkids: Tuesday, Week 2

Today at EMF kids we started exploring the sounds of music from the Baroque Era (~1600-1750).    We learned that lots of Baroque music dresses up the notes with fancy, wiggly notes called ornamentation.  We also talked about that way many Baroque pieces have several different melodies all going on at the same time, weaving in and out of one another.  We listened to some pieces by J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel and tried to count how many different people we heard playing as the various voices made their entrances in a fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier.

Later in the morning, conductor Thomas Hong introduced us to the percussion section, where we saw and listened to the sounds of the timpani, cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, and xylophone.  After a snack break we worked on an art project, played drums, sang more songs, and started to learn about how to play the recorder.   It was a full morning, and we look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

-'Miss Susannah'
Susannah Steele

EMFkids: Monday, Week 2

Week 2 of EMF kids is off to a good start!  It looks like we have a really great group of 15 six through eight year olds joining us at EMF kids this week.  Here are some of our activities from this morning:

-Circle time with singing and moving to several new songs.  We also played rhythm sticks, drums, and got to see a real trumpet up close.
-Listened to and described the sounds of the four instrument families.
-Outside parachute songs and dances
-Visited the string family during an EMF orchestra rehearsal, where we saw and heard a violin, viola, cello, double bass, and harp.

Miss Stephanie, Miss Diana and I are looking forward to seeing you all again tomorrow,

-'Miss Susannah'
Susannah Steele

EMFkids: Friday, Week 1

Thanks to all of our campers and families for a great week!  Hope to see you all next year.

-'Miss Susannah'
Susannah Steele

Concerto Competition Winners

After an intense concerto competition Eastern Music Festival can finally announce our six student winners! Each winner will perform their winning movement during one of the last two Young Artist Orchestra concerts on Thursday July 26 and Friday July 27. The winners are:

Hilary Zirkle, clarinet
Tiffany Laraia, viola
Lauren Osaka, flute
Sterling Elliott, cello
Nathan Lowry, violin
Mai Mizuno, piano

Congratulations to our winners and all who participated in the competition.

EMFkids: Thursday, Week 1

It's been another full morning for our EMF kids today!

Some of the highlights:

We continued working on ensemble singing with two different parts at once.

We put our rain sticks together, and tomorrow we'll use them to experiment with making weather sounds.

As usual we visited an orchestra rehearsal, and today the string family showed us all its members. We saw and heard a violin, viola, cello, and double bass.  Does anyone remember the full name of the cello?

Diana Tsaliovich, a violinist on EMF faculty came to visit our class.  She played several excerpts from different pieces and the children shared what the sound reminded them of (silver, a rainbow, people dancing, and a girl laughing were a few ideas).

Tomorrow we will have camp at the Music Academy of NC.  (You'll find a link to the address below.) Campers will follow the regular schedule, beginning at 9 am.  Parents are invited to come at 11:30 to hear a bit more about the Eastern Music Festival and Music Academy of NC, as well as a short demonstration of what we have learned this week. I'll look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

-'Miss Susannah'
Susannah Steele

Music Academy of NC

EMFkids 2012: Wednesday, Week 1

We had a full morning of music and creative activities this morning with EMFkids! 

Like yesterday, everyone had a chance to pick and play a percussion instrument.  (The duck-shaped guiro was very popular this morning!)  This time rather than playing in a large group, campers got to draw and color the sounds they heard while each took a turn playing.

We visited the percussion family of the orchestra and got to hear quite a few different kinds of sounds.  The conductor José-Luis Novo told us about the timpani, bass drum, several different cymbals, a xylophone, a glockenspiel and others.  I wonder if anyone remembers what the word 'glockenspiel' means?

Other highlights of the day included seeing and touching two different trumpets, painting what we heard while listening to Saint-Saens' 'Aviary' from Carnival of the Animals, and singing and moving to old and new songs.  They even worked on singing a new song in a two-part ensemble.  Tomorrow we're visiting the string family, and we may have a special guest visit our class!  

Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow,

-'Miss Susannah'

EMFkids 2012: Tuesday, Week 1

Now that everyone has gotten to know one another we were able to jump right into our singing and movement activities first thing this morning.  We sang some new songs and reviewed some of the favorites from Monday.


Our instrument family of the day was the brass section, so at orchestra rehearsal we visited the trumpet, french horn, trombone, bass trombone, and tuba.  The bass trombone and tuba's extremely low notes were pretty impressive.


Back in our classroom we played with various rhythmic instruments from the percussion section.  Everyone had a chance to hold and play drums, tambourine, woodblock, guiro, cowbell, jingle bells, castanets, and sandblock to accompany a recording of John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever"


Beyond exploring ways of playing these instruments, we've also started describing the types of sounds each can make (short/long, high/low, etc).  Tomorrow we have an art activity where each child will paint what they hear while listening to a piece of music (please don't wear your best clothes tomorrow- we may get a bit messy!)


Looking forward to seeing each of the campers tomorrow,


-'Miss Susannah'
Susannah Steele

EMFkids 2012: Monday, Week 1

We had a great first day of camp with EMFkids this morning!  Here are some of the things we did today:


*Sang and moved to several new songs - it took a little warming up, but by the end of the morning I was happy to see nearly everyone singing along.  We're aiming for 100% participation on all our activities.
*Learned about the four families of instruments: brass, woodwind, percussion, and strings.  We read a story, listened to and described their sounds, and talked about they are played.
*Visited the woodwind family following an orchestral rehearsal.  We got to see and hear a flute, piccolo, oboe, English horn, bassoon, contrabassoon, and clarinet.
*Got to see a flute up close, touch, and play the keys.
*Played rhythm sticks with songs, recorded music, and to create sound effects (a rainstorm)


We have lots of fun activities planned for tomorrow, so get plenty of rest tonight!  Please let me or any of the other teachers (Stephanie and Diana) know if you have questions or concerns.  We'll look forward to seeing your children in the morning!


-'Miss Susannah'
Susannah Steele

Our Festival Orchestra Series Gets Off to a Great Start!

Last night was the first concert in our Festival Orchestra Series featuring the Eastern Festival Orchestra and conductor Gerard Schwarz. Each week this faculty orchestra performs some of the greatest repertoire for orchestra and features a renowned guest artist. Last night the guest artist was Vladimir Feltsman, the Moscow-born pianist who is a regular soloist with the best orchestras around the world. He performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, op.37 to overwhelming approval. His musicality, technique, and interaction with the orchestra made it a joy to listen to. The orchestra also performed Prelude to Black Swan by Bright Sheng and Symphony No. 3 in C minor, op.78 by Saint-Saens with Andre Lash on organ.

Click here to head over to CVNC for the complete review of this excellent season opener.

The 51st Season is Underway!

We had a long morning of registration for students and faculty (with a few breaks for donuts and pizza) but finally, almost everyone is here! We have a Student Welcome Ceremony this evening at 6:00 pm, a picnic with the faculty, and then the season has started! We can't wait for rehearsals to start and the great music to begin.