Day 2 from the road with Aspen Music Festival and School Education Outreach Director Debby Barnekow and young composer Andrew Norman.
Today was spent in one of our adopted schools in the PLUS program, Glenwood Springs Elementary. The fifth graders will begin a composition right after Christmas using their recorder instruments, so the goal was to help them find a process to begin. Using his verb piece with video that he presented yesterday to the high school students, Andrew had them improvise sounds that corresponded to the 13 verbs: “… drip, blip, sparkle, glint, float, … chop, pop, splash.” We split the group into two groups and with Andrew and me conducting, creating a sound piece. Of course, then when they heard/saw the piece that Andrew composed, the whole process was very clear… and fun!