Music Monday - Adrian Adam Maydwell Music Archive

Back in May I wrote about this beautiful collection of choral music. I saw Tony Maydwell again over the weekend and he told me that the collection has now grown to over 500 works! This is such a generous gift to the worldwide choral music community and so I decided to repost the original for any of you who may have missed it first time around:

Perth based harpist, choral director, musicologist and collector and researcher of all choral things Renaissance, Baroque and Bolivian, Anthony (Tony) Maydwell, has set up a collection of works in memory of his son Adrian, also a musician and singer, who tragically lost his life in a road accident.

There are over 170 works already uploaded and eventually there will be over a thousand.

All are available for free with the only proviso being that appropriate attribution is given in performance. 

This is an incredible gesture from Anthony Maydwell and one which will benefit generations of musicians who love to play and sing this music. Tony writes in a facebook post: 

Adrian loved this repertoire and had opportunity to sing a great deal of it during his lifetime. Faith and I hope this will in a small way keep his memory alive for those who knew him and further an appreciation for the rich experience that can be had from singing and listening to this beautiful music.

Please share details of the site with musician friends:

https://aamma.co

Music Monday - Which layer of the music do you hear best?

A couple of weeks ago I attended a singing concert given by our graduating class of acting students. It is a class that I have taught for the past 25 years, and passed up this year as the start of a general reducing of my teaching hours. 

For past concerts I have been the accompanist and this time I was in the audience enjoying the whole experience. A couple of observations surprised me. For a start, I found that my attention kept straying to the pianist – despite compelling story-telling from the singers concerned. Was part of me wishing I was still on the piano stool? Or was it the fact that the accompanist is one of our finest local pianists? Or something else?

One of the challenges in training classes of acting students to sing is that there is a wide range of natural ability, experience and inclination present. This group were all strong at the story-telling aspect of singing, a couple had pitch issues and several are all round strong singers. With the last category, I was more able to appreciate the whole tapestry of their song – text on melody and the harmonic layers of the accompaniment.

In the week which followed, I was in one of my secondary school singing classes, but for once the students were silent. They were completing a written ‘marking up the score’ task in preparation for some sight-singing. In nearby rooms the faint sounds of clarinet and violin lessons could be heard. One of the students commented on how distracting the sounds were. Another said that she always likes to hear the background lessons when we are quiet in our singing class. Someone else noticed that the violin and clarinet clashed with each other but yet another student remarked that she thought it sounded like a really interesting piece of (unintentional) music. At this point a student, who had been intensely focussed on figuring out the solfa for the sight-singing piece, looked up and asked, “What are you talking about? I don’t hear anything.”

We can never really know what audiences hear when they listen to music. For example, that wonderful, evocative wash of sound in so many piano concerti of the Romantic period is created by the harmonic structure. We hum the tunes, but we inwardly hear the harmonies from both piano and orchestra.

How can we submit to the complete tapestry of music without our own preferences (and prejudices?) distracting?

Is it easier for audiences without music training to appreciate the whole concert experience?

These are my current preoccupying thoughts.

The power of music and song in children’s theatre

Last week I took our 4 -year- old grandson and his Mum to our state theatre to see a school holiday offering for young kids – “Room On The Broom”, based on the award winning children’s picture book by Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler, published by Macmillan Children’s books.

The show was in the main theatre, the Heath Ledger Theatre, and because ours was an impromptu decision to attend, we were seated in the last available seats, right up at the back of the circle and some distance from the stage. This did not bother young William in the least; he was intrigued by the size of the theatre and the height from which he was watching the stage. It was the largest theatre he has been in, to date, and I’d imagine it was the same for many in the young audience. Around us were children ranging in age from babies to around the 8 years mark. Lots of grandparents.

I wondered how we would all fare up there, so far from the action on stage, when the show started.

As it turns out, the physical distance did not prove a problem for William, nor for kids of similar age. Younger children were more easily distracted, but that age were distracted downstairs in the stalls as well.

The show was just the right length – about 55 minutes – and delivered with an energy of around 150%. This would be exhausting for an audience if sustained for much longer,  but seemed an important component in holding their attention in this short show.

There were puppets – big, realistic, glove style puppets. And the actors operating them provided their voices. (At one stage the actor managing the dog and the frog mixed up his accents but no one much minded). Suspension of disbelief was abundant, which was wonderful to see in this audience. (Side note – last holidays we went to a puppet show where the puppets were made of fruit and veges. This was a step too far for our 4- year- old – “You can’t really make a puppet out of vegetables, can you?”)

The main actor characters were the witch and her cat – a costumed actor -  and the audience loved them.

But by far the component of the show which held it all together and brought kids’ attention back to the stage was the music. Backing -tracks and live singing – in parts, and of a high standard.  Fun songs with catchy but easy tunes. Towards the end we were all invited to join in the refrain of the final song – and we did it lustily. Audiences love to join in.

As the performance ended, William declared, “That was a really good show”.  And it was. But without the music it would have been so much less. 

As we walked to lunch in the city, I was thinking about how enriching music and song is to so many of young children’s learning. It is of course learning in its own right, but music also enables so much more in us.

Music Monday - Resilience in music teachers during Covid.

I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be an effective and resilient Australian music teacher in 2020.

The ground has shifted multiple times this year and each shift has found music teachers seeking new ways to find balance and stay effective in the job.

First there was the lockdown- which of course is still in place in parts of Australia. In the early pandemic lockdown days teachers learned to adapt and implement online learning over a variety of platforms. Those of us engaged in teaching singing quickly found the frustrations of the lag on every online platform. We started to prepare and issue backing tracks so that our students could experience accompaniments in real time when singing for us. Ideas and tips were shared.

Zoom fatigue became a thing- after a day of online teaching in front of a laptop screen our necks were locked and our brains exhausted. But then we would turn to watching videoed self-tapes submitted by students for our critical response.

When some states returned to face-to-face teaching we felt relieved. But then a new reality kicked in. Teaching rooms needed to be sanitized between students. Piano keyboards were sanitized between players. Social distancing rendered some of our teaching spaces unusable. Points of assessment missed in first semester were scheduled into a much tighter time frame. At the secondary performing arts school I work in, we scheduled two senior school musicals in the space of two weeks with a fifty percent capacity audience in keeping with the level of restrictions still in place in WA.

Our final year secondary students who are applying for places in tertiary music performance courses find the rules changed here too of course. Instead of live auditions in November - after final academic exams will be over- most tertiary institutions are requiring self- taped videos to be submitted from the end of August. This has significantly reduced the preparation time.

And of course, running underneath these shifting rules is the consideration of ‘what if?’ What if there is another wave (as there has been in Victoria) and we are locked down again? Will 2021 be the year in which most students in elite performance courses - like NIDA, WAAPA, VCA to name only three- are sourced from their home state rather than interstate and overseas? So many ‘what ifs’.

In the meantime teachers are dealing with understandably stressed students.

There has not been one week this year when I have not had at least one student at the secondary or tertiary level in a state of stress which has significantly compromised their work. I get it- none of us knows what the way out of this pandemic really looks like. None of us were around in 1918 for the last one.

But as teachers we are the guides, the strong ones, right?

But who looks after us? And if we are responsible for that, how do we do it?

Among my colleagues I have observed several approaches. One friend took a term of leave and has returned to school refreshed. Several friends are drinking more alcohol in the evenings than in non- Covid times. Yet another colleague has abstained from alcohol altogether and looks and feels fantastic. I have started knitting- nothing complicated, just long scarves with uncomplicated stitches. I find it curiously calming and meditative.

As I write this I am reminded of a radio interview on mindfulness and resilience which I heard in my car early on in the pandemic. A three point approach was encouraged:

1. Each evening think of one thing which went well in your day.

2. Each day make contact with someone in your address book- by phone, by text message, by an act of kindness or a social media post.

3. Spend 10 minutes a day being mindful- eg walk around your block focussing just on the sounds in your immediate environment.

What are you doing to stay healthy and strong in these challenging teaching times?

As always, we encourage and welcome your comments.

Music Monday - Embodied Singing

This is the final week of what has been a long and challenging semester in high schools across Australia and the whole world. In my own little world of a performing arts high school in Perth, I have a tradition in the final week of allowing the younger music theatre specialist students to sing an ‘own choice song’ of any genre, purely for the fun of singing -  the only provision being that the text is suitable for a school environment. I work at the school on Mondays and Fridays so today was the first of these ‘own choice song’ days for this year.

Predictably, today the year 10 girls chose music theatre songs from current favourite shows – think Wicked, Frozen, Beetle Juice, Bring It On.  And the year 8 boys, after asking, “Miss, is it okay to do a rap song if we don’t sing the rude words?”, sang lustily, with a nudge and wink at each other at all the (silent) offensive moments. 

What was clear in all the fun song performances today was that every student was relaxed. There was no sense of assessment or preparing a song that would at some point become an assessment task. Their bodies were relaxed and when they inhaled it was with relaxed abdominal muscles. There was a bit of bopping around to the backing tracks and a much greater unconscious grounding of their lower bodies. These are all qualities that as a singing teacher, I strive for every day. All the singing today was embodied.

Greater embodiment is something we often observe in a masterclass when a singer, after instruction from the master teacher, sings very much better on the second attempt. This can be due to valuable help from the master teacher -  but can also be in part, a more relaxed performance after settling into a performance situation.

At my other workplace – a music theatre department at tertiary level – we have a series of ‘audition performance practices’. Lately these have of course been online, but when we are all in the space together, students so often fare much better in the singing task set at the ‘call back’ than in their actual performance. It seems that getting an endorsement of their initial performance in the form of a call-back allows them to relax into their bodies for the ‘call back’.

What does this all mean for us as teachers of singing? 

I think we need to take every opportunity to learn from the expertise of psychologists working in the field of performance. And we need to constantly search for the warm-up strategies which help students unlock their own bodies. In performance, we need to encourage students to embrace the character and story and lose themselves and their complete focus on technique.

As always, I invite and thank you for your comments.

Music Monday - Don’t sing ‘Fah’!

Yesterday morning our friend John sent us a link to the recently -gone -viral Dustyesky Fake Russian Choir from Mullumbimby on the northern coast of NSW in Australia. Here a bunch of Aussie blokes, who speak no Russian but have a love of vodka, Russian music and song, have formed what they claim to be ‘the largest fake Russian choir in the southern hemisphere’. In that mysterious way that things go viral, they have become an internet sensation and were actually invited to visit Russia (before the pandemic put a stop to their plans). Instead they sent to Russia a video collaborated through social media. 

And that video has been popping up all over social media.

(As an aside, a Russian choir responded by sending a performance of Waltzing Matilda – in that wonderful way that choirs unite people across cultures).

Anyway, later yesterday I was driving from my school to another campus when our local ABC radio conducted an interview with the conductor of the choir. And then later still, when I was finally home in the evening, ABC television was doing a feature on the same choir. 

I was saturated with fake Russian choir singers yesterday!

Now what was of particular interest to me – and the point to today’s post -  was that, at the end of the TV report, a disclaimer was flashed across the screen alerting viewers that singing in groups at this time is not considered safe.

And so back to our previous Music Monday post where we alerted you to the disturbing findings by NATS in the USA.

In the fortnight since, the Guardian has published another finding which many singers and singing teachers - and possibly wind instrument players and teachers – have seen as a glimmer of hope.

But then a few days later, the highly regarded Australian Gondwana National Choirs hosted a webinar with a leading epidemiologist and an aerospace engineer with further findings. As one of my colleagues commented, “It seems we need to stick to pentatonic scales for now – or at least avoid singing fah.”

This evening ANATS (Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing) are hosting a ‘coffee and conversation’ webinar (for members) on health and hygiene in the singing studio.

Where do those findings leave us? I think that at the very least, we should be cautious about observing a safe distance between us and our singers. Many usual teaching studios and rooms will be of insufficient size. 

For the past 2 months I have been very aware of how dirty my laptop screen becomes after zoom lessons and classes. I demonstrate directly to the screen and aerosol droplets collect on the surface. The days of the singing student reading music over the shoulder of the pianist are sadly over - at least for now.

For so long we have recognised how beneficial singing is to all aspects of health (for example: https://ideas.time.com/2013/08/16/singing-changes-your-brain/). Singing is also immensely pleasurable and fun. 

We all owe it to ourselves to search for the safest ways forward at this time.

Music Musing Monday - What is it about the taas and titis?

For many years I have enjoyed asking people about what, if anything, they remember of their primary school music education. Each year I pose this question to the class of 1st year acting students I teach at WAAPA. And when running workshops for primary classroom teachers over the years, I have always posed it to them as well.

For many of my generation in Western Australia, the only school music education was the weekly ABC singing broadcast to schools. On Friday mornings at around 11.30am the crackly classroom wireless set was cranked into action to deliver the song to be taught that week. My classmates would sigh and then drag themselves into reluctant submission to the alien classical songs being offered for their musical education. By contrast I always enjoyed – or pretended to enjoy - the broadcasts, but then I was already learning piano from my grandmother and listening to my mother practise art songs and German Lieder for her next ABC broadcast. I suspect I was a young musical upstart.

In the 1980s the Education Department in Western Australia introduced music specialist teaching into primary schools. It was a political decision to support the teachers’ union demand for DOTT (duties other than teaching) time for classroom teachers. To support the appointment of so many specialist teachers (many of whom had had limited actual specialisation in music themselves), the department developed music syllabus materials to support them. “Music In Schools” was developed, based on the Kodaly approach to music education, and on the work of Deanna Hoermann in NSW. Deanna was one of Australia’s pioneers in bringing the Kodaly approach into an Australian context.

So back to my original question. Many of the students and fellow teachers I have worked with over the past 20 years were educated post-1980s  - and in the Kodaly approach (which emphasizes solfa and time names and a methodical approach to intervals through singing.)

The taas and titis are the very first, basic rhythmic steps of this approach – closely followed by tika -tika, timka, etc. And paralleled by the learning of simple melodic intervals such as the falling minor third. It is a sequential program of learning.

Yet it is those first two rhythmic patterns that are remembered best  - both as sound and symbol – along with anecdotes about marking the rhythms with claves, making rhythmic patterns by making the symbol shapes with pop sticks and so on.

Is this another example of our fundamental human instinct for beat and rhythm? Or is it simply that beat and rhythm are less complex to teach than melody, so therefore more students Australia-wide have been exposed to the taas and titis?

What was your experience?

Music Musing Monday - Sound or Sense?

In the past week or so I have been pondering the curious phenomenon of student singers to ask after a performance, “How did it sound?” or “Was my voice okay?”

 Not “Was my interpretation clear?” or “Was I singing correct pitches and rhythms?” or “Could you understand the text?” or “Did you believe me?”

 The acting students I work with rarely ask, after performing a monologue or role, “How did it sound?” or “Was my voice okay?” But - the moment we work on songs, those same questions arise. 

When I draw the comparison with the speaking voice, the student actors are usually amused. Sure, they will ask whether they were successful in maintaining accent and dialect in a speech or role, or whether they could be heard clearly. But the sound of their spoken voice rarely concerns them. 

Successful singing and acting both rely on a secure vocal technique. And, of course, singing and speaking voices vary enormously in their inherent timbre and beauty. But where most of us will look forward to seeing a particular actor, more because of his / her ability to tell a story and transform into character than the essential sound of his / her voice; many more of us will go to hear a singer because of the voice itself.

I have always ranked the story-telling above the sound of the voice but over the years have come to realise that people are pretty evenly split on this.

Where do you fit? Is it the essential sound or the sense of what is being sung or spoken which hooks you?