During Term 3, while I was on Long Service Leave, I took some of the time to travel to Canada and the US to attend some courses.

The International Kodaly Symposium was held in Camrose, Alberta, in Canada. There were delegates from all around the world. Each day began with singing and then there were a number of sessions to choose from to attend.  As with most Music Classes, they are “doing” classes. You don’t sit back and take notes, you are singing and dancing. I learnt a number of new songs as well as realising the importance (again) of singing folk-songs and doing movement based activities.

The University of Alberta is a beautiful campus with elk wandering around. I saw these a number of times when walking to and from the classes.  There were a number of American Indian songs taught to everyone, along with the understanding of the areas.

I always leave these courses very inspired, thinking of ways to use what I have learnt with the students. I am getting the younger boys to do some simple dancing with some fun folksongs. If you want to find out more information please click here.

My next stop was a seven day workshop of improvisational singing with a fabulous team of singers, including Bobby McFerrin. This course was called Circlesongs.

There are a number of Circlesong groups throughout the US. Darren Percival of The Voice fame has attended this – it seems he is the only other Australian. There were people from other countries and from all around the US. Many of the delegates have been to previous sessions. I have never attended a course like this before. It is very confronting to stand in the middle of a group of amazing singers, improvise and ask them to start singing a pattern that you have created, for you to then continue to make at least a further 4 patterns for the rest of the group to sing and then for you to further improvise melodies on top. It is an incredible feeling when you do and it is just as fantastic to be part of the group singing the patterns that others create.

The other teachers were very unique too – a body percussionist, a vocal percussionist, a beatboxer (these are different!), an incredible singer from Lebanon who sings in 1/4 tones (really small intervals) and wonderful bass singer and then there were three other singers to make up the group. Bobby McFerrin is an amazing vocalist. The standard he expects is really high and it is wonderful to achieve this.

Here are a couple of links:

Showing the pentatonic scale

CircleSongs – you can hear in this how there are patterns that are repeated and they evolve and Bobby McFerrin is singing on top of these.

Again I am looking forward to using the ideas and techniques that I learnt at this course throughout my teaching as well as in the Community Choir.

Vanessa South – Music Mistress