Last year Ms. Tumenas, Dr. Lederman and Mrs. Hilliard worked with the sixth grade to create this video project about life in the Berkshires and at BCD. It was created for the website, www.bridgesofpeaceandhope.info/ It has not been uploaded to their site yet, but we hope it will be included soon!
We are beginning to build some bridges of peace and hope with the AVJ School in Haiti. We are in the first stages of doing some collaborative music projects. The two schools are anxious to get to know each other and so we are forwarding this video to them, so that they can learn more about us.
Grades 1-6 came together on Friday to enjoy some holiday songs. Thank you to Ms. Clausen for sending us this video clip. Have a wonderful time with your families over break!
Enjoy the video of our music concert. Thank you to Michael B. and Tyler S. their expert videotaping. A special thank you to Mrs. Tumenas for her wonderful editing.
First graders in my art class are working on geometric designs with their initials. The project is student generated and a big hit with the Alligators and the Bats. Last week while working, students spontaneously started singing the BCD school song. With Thanksgiving fast approaching I am thankful for the confluence of art and music in the Lower School Art Studio. Enjoy!
www.moma.org/interactives/artsafari/ This link is for an interactive site at the Museum of Modern Art website. For young children and their parents, this is a fun site and, among other things, an opportunity to look at famous works of art and practice learning how to talk about arworks.
Here at BCD we also try to learn the language of art- making art, learning art principles and elements, and talking about art. For instance, the Third Graders have learned about Matisse, Picasso, and Calder and their work so far this year. They have also made edible color wheels.
Fourth graders have explored figures, drawing self portraits and making figure sculptures.They have also made sculptures for Thanksgiving Soup decorations.
Fifth graders have been drawing to share information about themselves.
In the Sixth grade, they have explored what makes a successful landscape picture, as well as the mediums of collage, watercolors, and watercolor pencils. They have studied the Hudson River School, and gone on a field trip to Olana, former home of Frederic Church.
The Foundations class has been learning about drawing- mirror images, negative space, shading, and design techniques as well as relative sizes and compostition.
The Drawing, Painting and Sculpture class also worked with drawing, looking at relative sizes, composition, and shading, as well as ways to use line to describe shapes. They have also had an assignment that they could fulfill in any medium.
Classes also spend time looking at and talking about the work they have done. They learn to share ideas, experiment, and think of new ways to put thing together. The arts are enriching for all our students!
Please drop into the library to see the 4th Grade Sculpture Show, , and visit the Berkshire Museum to see the 3rd Grade’s tree in the Festival of Trees.
Also, a reminder- Members of The Arts Dept. are taking turns posting weekly items. Please click the Arts at the top of the MyBCD screen. It has been hard to find, but we hope we have corrected that.
In the Graphic Design class, seventh and eighth grade students are currently learning to use Adobe Illustrator. We have begun by exploring some of the ways type can be used and manipulated. In the first assignment students were asked to use type in anyway they chose to create an image or a message. They could distort letters, use them as design elements, or as words. In the second assignment students had to create type without using the Type Tool at all. They had to, in effect, create their own letters. Here are two student examples from each assignment.
In this slide show-the third grade works with Mr. Vacca to learn their part for the assembly.
On Friday, October 7th Tony Vacca came to BCD to perform for the students and faculty, and give a couple of percussion workshops as well. I knew Tony from having seen him at several concerts/festivals where I had been playing in a band that was sharing the stage with him and his band. I always noticed how incredibly energetic and down to earth he seemed, as well as being an absolute genius of a percussion player. The first time I heard him perform solo, I was in a different room when he started playing, and I was sure that I was hearing a group of four or five drummers. I was shocked when I went into the room where he was playing and it was only one guy.
How does a performer like Tony communicate to a group of kids he has never met before, and get them to pull off something that would be interesting beyond just a couple of basic drum grooves from West Africa in an hour or less?
After I introduced Tony to the kids, he did a brief solo on his percussion setup, partially so he could get their attention and also to introduce them to some of the basic patterns that they would be learning later on. From then on, he was constantly drumming and talking (or maybe more like rapping), giving each student a specific instrument and a part to play. Twenty drummers were playing six different rhythms simultaneously with Tony improvising on top.
Once everybody got the hang of their specific rhythm, he started to outline the shape of the song that we would perform later during the assembly. There was a lot of call and response going on both with drumming and with vocalizing the drum parts. Tony puts a lot of emphasis on the fact that the drum is an extension of one’s voice so it is important to be able to say or sing what you are doing. What was amazing to me was the fact that he spent a very minimal amount of time talking about drum technique beyond a basic bass/tone hand technique and how to hold a stick, and spent the majority of the workshop pointing out valuable life and big picture lessons that were happening during the process of learning the song and arrangement. He pointed out that although each individual part was fairly easy, the challenge is to try to learn all of the parts in the song.
Tony started out his performance during the assembly whisper quiet on the chimes and cymbals, which quickly developed into a thunder of gongs and other ambient sounds. This soundscape lasted for several minutes until he switched over to his main percussion station featuring a number of classic Latin and African drums, cymbals, and Tony’s trademark, standing up while operating foot pedals that are playing woodblocks and bells. He then moved over to his balafon (an African marimba) and played a piece on it while keeping time with bells on his legs and wrists, simultaneously incorporating bass drum and various high pitched percussion instruments. After that, he played a solo on the djembe drum which featured some spoken word and storytelling, and rounded out the show with a beautiful solo on the mbira (thumb piano). Then the students, who had been in his workshops, got up and did a great job of playing Tony’s song.
Speaking from a student’s point of view, I thought this was an incredible experience, not just for the opportunity to learn a great tradition of music from a master, but also to see somebody so incredible passionate about his art. At one point, Tony said that someone asked him how he can move and set up all these drums and sound gear, teach a clinic, perform a concert, and then have the energy to play a gig later on that night. Tony responded by saying that the act of drumming and making music generates more energy than you started with. I couldn’t agree more!! Jon Suters
