VSB cuts to music programs - The VSO responds...

Remarks made by Bramwell Tovey, Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra to the Vancouver School Board (VSB)Trustees at a public meeting at Mount Pleasant Elementary, Vancouver  April 20th 2010.

(There was a 5 minute limit on all presentations.)

Good Evening. My name is Bramwell Tovey. I am the Music Director and artistic head of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. I am also a parent of two students in a VSB French immersion program, aged 9 and 11. My wife, Lana is a music educator with several years experience of inner-city school teaching in Winnipeg.  For four years she volunteered as teacher of music and choir for Queen Elizabeth Annex Elementary School where she taught every class as this VSB school had no provision for music.

The VSO performs to 50,000 students every year in our educational and other concerts for children.

The VSO Connects educational program works in partnership with school boards across the Lower Mainland. Our education work is supported by Telus, our premier education partner, the RBC Foundation and the Jemini Foundation. VSO Connects  provides a link between the orchestra and  selected schools on a year to year basis, bringing us into direct contact with thousands of students throughout the Lower Mainland. We have worked in harmonious partnership with the VSB and sincerely thank you for your tremendous support of this important program which also brings band and orchestra students to VSO rehearsals at the Orpheum in downtown Vancouver .

One of the modules we present is a “Meet the Maestro” program. I have visited dozens of schools in this program as a guest speaker and performer, speaking to the whole school community, students, parents who wish to attend, and of course, the teachers whose dedication and skill is so inspiring. I talk about music, the VSO, the language of music, the elements of composition and of course, I play the piano- the highlight is usually a short movement by Beethoven whose music  always connects with young listeners.

I make the point that Beethoven had a seemingly insurmountable handicap for a musician – he was deaf. He lived in a world of silence yet understood the language of music better than any of his contemporaries. He created some of the most extraordinary music to have captivated hearts and minds during the last two hundred years.

At the VSO we believe an education without a significant musical component is no education at all.

Music is a form of language which reaches every human being. It  needs little or no translation.  In a school district like Vancouver,  where dozens of languages are spoken by our widely diverse community,  music is the only language common to everyone.
Read more »

Books and reading are important

This post may be quite a bit off topic, but in the spirit of providing a blog about excellence in education I have decided to post this article here.

In an era of electronic entertainment, the term “home library” increasingly has the word “video” in the middle. But before parents start giving away books to clear shelf space for DVDs, they’ll want to consider the results of a comprehensive new study.
After examining statistics from 27 nations, a group of researchers found the presence of book-lined shelves in the home — and the intellectual environment those volumes reflect — gives children an enormous advantage in school.
“Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s occupational status and other family background characteristics,” reports the study, recently published in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. “Growing up in a home with 500 books would propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average, than would growing up in a similar home with few or no books.


Home Libraries provide a huge Educational Advantage  Miller McCune April 8, 2010

Teaching corner - memorizing music

As we head towards festival and exam season here are a couple of links to recent blog posts of interest I have discovered online dealing with the problems of memorization in music.

12 Tips for Memorizing Piano Music  - specifically about the piano, but much of the information here can be applied to other instruments as well.

Practice Notebook - How I memorize Music - another article with a precise step -by - step process for looking at a score and internalizing it.