2017 Vermont MEA Conference
October 6, 2017

Endangered Musical Minds Keynote   Children are born with potential to succeed in music.  With inappropriate music experiences in the early years, children lose their intuitiveness for making accurate and sensitive musical responses.  The future success of vocal and instrumental performers as well as musical participation in daily life is significantly dependent on appropriate early intervention.  Here is critical information about how children think music and what we can do to help them musically develop.

FIRST STEPS IN MUSIC:  VOCAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE EARLY YEARS   During the early learning years, children can acquire musical sensitivities, which will provide them with a lifetime of expressive and accurate singing intuitions. This lively session will present insights and activities that can foster those intuitions in children from three to age nine, through the use of folk songs and games.

FIRST STEPS IN MUSIC: MOVEMENT DEVELOPMENT IN THE EARLY YEARS   During the early learning years, children can acquire musical sensitivities, which will provide them with a lifetime of expressive and accurate movement intuitions. This energetic session will present insights and activities that can foster those intuitions in children from birth to age nine, through the use of folk songs and rhymes as well as through movement experiences with classical recordings.

12 STEPS TO MUSIC LITERACY USING CONVERSATIONAL SOLFEGE: PART 1: Rhythmic Literacy   Through carefully sequenced activities this workshop will address the National Standards while demonstrating how to enable students to joyfully assimilate the content and skills necessary to become musically literate including the acquisition of listening, rhythmic reading, dictation, composition, and improvisation in an intuitive manner. Participants will experience a curriculum that grows out of rhythmic elements that exist in the folk song literature of this country. Each rhythmic element will also be explored in patterns, songs and themes from classical literature.

12 STEPS TO MUSIC LITERACY USING CONVERSATIONAL SOLFEGE: PART 2: Melodic Literacy   Literature using advanced Solfege patterns with a parallel development of rhythm patterns in 2/4 and 6/8 meter will be presented. Opportunities for early experience in part singing are demonstrated with, rhythmic and melodic sight-reading, dictation, composition, and improvisation. Participants will experience a curriculum that grows out of tonal and rhythmic elements found in folk song to classical literature.