Music Monday - What will we do next? How do you decide the next musical?

The curtain has just descended on your successful production. Your students (and their parents and even the Principal) are clamouring: “what will we do next?" You’ve done a run of successful shows and you want the next one to be as successful. How do you rise to this challenge?

This can be a delicious dilemma.

But there are questions that need answers.

• How do you choose the next musical or play to produce in your school?

• Who decides?

• What is the process? Is there a process?

• What are the principles on which choices are made?

Is the choice of your school’s next production whim? What’s trending? Debate? Consultation?

Who and how you decide is a measure of your underlying values. 

Who decides makes a difference.

How often are drama teachers portrayed in films as loopy, self aggrandising megalomaniacs (for comic purposes of course)! But can this sort of decision making ever be truly democratic? There is a question that needs to be always asked: whose production is this?

A process establishes clear guiding principles, timelines and is transparent and consultative

Some questions to developing guiding principles

Choosing a production in an education setting

• How does this choice of production meet the learning needs of your students?

• Is the production designed to meet a mandated curriculum or syllabus requirement? 

  For example, if the syllabus requires students to explore examples of historical music theatre using book structures and fully integrated songs and dances then the choices are different if what was required was a jukebox musical.

• what is the overall purpose of the production?

  Is it to satisfy syllabus standards? Or is it to bring together the school as a community working collaboratively on a shared project? Is it about “school spirit”? Or perhaps, what is the balance between these purposes?

• Is this chosen production appropriate for the level of skills development and learning progression of your students?

  – Vocal range?

  – Level of dance? 

  – Specialised dance such as tap?

  – Emotional demands of roles?

  In other words can your students manage the song ranges, dance requirements, acting challenges? It is OK for younger students to work on Junior Versions with adjusted scores.

• Is it age appropriate in terms of content, and acting? 

  There is nothing quite as off-putting as a Year 9 playing (trying to play) Bloody Mary in South Pacific.

• Are the themes and subject appropriate for your school setting?

• Will the community support it?

• Will your Principal and colleagues go on the journey with you?

Practical issues

• Can you get the rights?

• What is the size of the cast?

• What is the gender balance of roles?

• What is the gender balance of your students available for the production?

• What are the staging requirements?

  For example, Does it require Peter Pan flying? Or are there multiple sets? costumes? Props?

• Is the title recognisable and marketable for your community?

• Do you have to have a well-known production?

  Some productions, particularly musicals are known properties. Parents as audiences know the difference between Mama Mia and all the nearly-made it shows in the catalogue. 

There is one final question: do you want to spend countless hours of your life and a river of sweat and tears on a show that you don’t believe in?

It’s not as simple as pulling up the MTI Catalogue and sticking a pin in the title list. 

The Educational Theatre Association’s (EdTA) https://schooltheatre.org/play-survey/ annual play survey for the 2021-2022 year.

Music Monday - Music Theatre Overload

It’s a music theatre overload. Straight from Mac and Mabel at The Maj (WAAPA) to John Curtin for 42nd Street ( with a detour for fish and chips at The Groper and His Wife!)

42nd Street is amazing. 

Yes there were some sloppy mike cues. And a bit of fluffiness first night nerves. But truly amazing. Not just the usual disclaimer that they’re just school kids. The actors danced their taps off. They sang with attack and gusto. A complete package. The orchestra was fierce (sometimes a bit too so!). And tunefully on point for style and oomph. 

Yes, there are some severely overworked males filling too many roles. Take nothing away from them. But the drought of boys and flood of girl talent needs attention. But when you think where the music theatre program has travelled to get to this point it’s a theatre mystery. To quote the classics. 

And by contrast with this arvo, I could understand every word (when the mike cues worked!). Why do you think that is? 

Some talented younger performers too. Year 10. Great tapping – amazing tapping. Staging.  

Increasingly we see more use of projections. Jury is out still about the effectiveness of their use. Challenging to get right.  But as I noted to Liz, the whole MTI packaging of music theatre  productions for schools is phenomenal (https://www.mtishows.com/production-resources). It’s not just that they have a range of productions available (Senior and Junior versions), it’s the breadth of the resources: not just music and recordings but also choreography. The scripts are well produced and informative for students. There’s a range of resources. Talking of projections there are also packages of them for shows that can be licensed (https://www.mtishows.com/marketplace/resource/performance/scenic-projectionstm). Of course, you also need the equipment to project them – and the sophistication of this virtual scenography is increasing.  

The WAAPA production of Mac and Mabel was also highly entertaining. And used lots of projections. Those students are also amazing. But I do have a couple of  questions unanswered.

There’s good reason why some music theatre shows are revived often and have enduring popularity (though that can change over time!).

But there’s also shows that fade away. 

Mac and Mabel is Structurally problematic. Two Mack Sennets. And, my, how the 1927 Sennet grew 12 inches in the intervening years. Despite disparity of heights though they were well matched performances. 

But, you know there’s a problem with the show when there’s a full five minutes of explanatory slideshow to address the gaps in the audience’s understanding of the people in the story. 

The person beside me asked before the overture if this was about the Mabel from the wireless days (Mabel was a character in Dad and Dave from Snake Gully an Australian radio drama series 1937 – 1953). 

For me, it was minute 37 before there was a popularly recognisable tune.

And issues of clarity with spoken lines from leading lady - not from singing. Go figure!

Makes you wonder why this show was the Big Ticket WAAPA showcase in The Maj. Something to offer in terms of challenge and learning for students but why this  rather forgettable piece which would fit more easily into another slot in the WAAPA calendar. 

As I said, though, a music theatre overload for one day and I haven’t even talked about seeing the Black Swan production of Once at the Regal. 

Music Monday - ANZAC Day

Anzac Day. One of the most important days in the Australian calendar year. Over my 45 plus years of teaching I have witnessed the resurgence of observation of Anzac services in schools. Back in 1975, as a young high school Music and English teacher I was fresh from the moratorium marches of the Vietnam war years and not wanting to be seen to glorify war in my choice of songs for Anzac Day. So, it was “I Was Only Nineteen” rather than the more patriotic traditional choices. Emphasising the futility, rather than the glory, of war.

Nevertheless, in our family – like so many Australian families – we have our own WW1 story; that of my great uncle Sam’s untimely death at Passchendaele, Belgium on 17 October 1917.

Samuel Vaughan Selby was a dentist, working at rebuilding soldiers’ destroyed faces after shelling. He received a white feather which shamed him into direct combat on the battlefield where he was killed on his first sortie.

Today I was sorting through music in my music room when I serendipitously stumbled on two pieces of old family music.

One was great uncle Sam’s - a work for violin and piano. He never returned home to play his violin again.

The other was one of my grandmother’s piano pieces, purchased when she was studying piano in London, after winning a place at the prestigious Royal College of Music. At the start of the war, her father sent her a cable to tell her to come home immediately as it was no longer safe to stay. Her performance career was cut short, and she returned to Perth to work as a piano teacher for the rest of her 84 years. My grandmother was Samuel Selby’s sister. 

So here, on my bookshelf, are two volumes of music, each representing music silenced by war.

Where are the songs about that?

Music Monday - Welcome back to another year of music making.

Here in Western Australia the music teaching community, refreshed after the 6-week hot summer break, turns its attention to the arrival of the omicron variant of Covid19. 

For those of you reading from afar, WA has maintained until now a firmly closed border (a matter of vigorous political debate) and so we are only now experiencing the start of our own omicron wave. 

After a relatively normal 2021 teaching year, teachers here are now joining the ongoing international and interstate discussions about the most suitable masks to wear while singing. Or whether performing groups in schools should be limited to single year cohorts to minimise potential viral spread within a school. Or whether choreography for the school musical can include body contact with another performer. 

One of my singing students happily picked up a gig in a Perth Fringe Festival show this week after the original singer was sadly deemed a close contact of a positive case and forced into isolation. There are winners and losers at this time.

There is much uncertainty about how this semester will proceed in schools. Some disruption seems inevitable. I found yesterday’s all-day teaching in a mask very tiring. So did my students and teaching colleagues. 

Our daughter in the USA has been doing this for two years. It feels odd to her to be not wearing a mask now. 

News from interstate suggests that omicron might be receding. That is good news. But will another wave follow? 

Right now, the questions outnumber the answers. 

To end on a completely different note, so many of us were saddened to learn of American actress  Betty White’s passing on 31st December 2021. Did you know that in her early career she also sang? Take a listen to this:

Enjoy your day!

Music Monday - Are Christmas carols okay again?

Over the past two weeks as my high school students complete their final voice classes for the year, I have encouraged them to bring in ‘own choice’ songs from any genre. I do this every year, as do many singing teachers. 

What has interested me this year, however, is that rather than choosing current popular songs, most of my students have asked to sing carols. 

Now these are specialist music theatre students, reasonably diverse in terms of ethnicity, and not from predominantly Christian families. It is a government (secular) school. And by ‘carols’ the students have meant traditional songs such as Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Silent Night and The First Noel, as well as Christmas themed songs such as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Winter Wonderland and We Wish You A Merry Christmas.

A few years ago, schools were actively avoiding the use of Christmas carols in class and at assemblies, for fear of offending non-Christian cultural groups within their communities.

 For several years, I kept carols out of December too.

 So it was a real surprise to be singing and playing them for a good part of the last fortnight, especially as they were requested by the students.

Has Australia become more truly multicultural (despite the noisy racist minority) where we can sing songs from traditions other than our own for a cultural rather than religious experience? (For many years the blaring of Christmas themed songs and carols has been a feature in shopping centres – mainly to remind customers that it is the season of consuming. Few people have associated carols over the intercom with a perception of Australia as a Christian country). 

Perhaps we are now happily moving to a time where we can appreciate some of the really good tunes in Christmas carols without letting it become socially divisive.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Music Monday - Stephen Sondheim

The worldwide reaction to Sondheim’s death continues. At the secondary school where I teach the music theatre classes have swapped their usual end of year activities for documentaries about the great man.

This popped up this morning. It would be wonderful to see Australian theatres take part on Wednesday.

This Wednesday, join us and the theatre community in dimming your lights for Stephen Sondheim

This Wednesday, December 8, Broadway theatres will dim their marquees at 6:30 PM ET in honor of legendary composer Stephen Sondheim.

As we continue to commemorate Sondheim and his everlasting impact, we invite you to join in dimming your lights on Wednesday at whatever time is convenient for you.

For more than 40 years, MTI has had the distinct privilege of representing Mr. Sondheim's work, including 28 of his iconic musicals and revues, resulting in over 50,000 productions around the world. We know his shows have meant so much to so many of you.

We look forward to you joining us in spirit. 

Music Monday - Vale Stephen Sondheim, 22 March 1930- 26 November 2021

In the days following Sondheim’s sudden death at age 91, the internet has been saturated with an outpouring of reaction to the loss of the ‘Shakespeare of Music Theatre’, arguably the greatest writer of the form in the 20th century. In the past few days, singers, actors, teachers, writers, directors, artists and journalists have articulated tributes far more eloquently than I can.

My first Sondheim experience was the movie of West Side Story in 1961, though like many at the time, I thought of it as mainly Bernstein’s piece. 

Some years later in late 1973, on my first solo trip to Sydney as a young adult, I saw A Little Night Music at Her Majesty’s Theatre (restored after fire destroyed it in 1970). This was a pivotal point in my musical life. I can still remember sitting up in the dress circle, trying to absorb it all.

In my 30 plus years of teaching singing at WAAPA, I have been privileged to work with and learn from three Sondheim devotees. Firstly John Milson, founding head of Musical Theatre at WAAPA. It was John Milson’s ambition to direct all of Sondheim’s musicals. Denis Follington followed John Milson and would often say “To sing Sondheim well, you simply follow all the instructions contained in the score – Sondheim has written it all down for you.” I was reminded of this when watching the Times Square tribute below. Most recently, retiring former head of Music Theatre, David King, has taught, played, MD’d and researched all of Sondheim’s works.

What a huge legacy Sondheim has left for us all.

Please look at the three links below. They are among my favourites from these recent days. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/parenting/stars-react-to-the-death-of-legendary-composer-and-lyricist-stephen-sondheim/ar-AARcsbU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKSYeMgamIA

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/VIDEO-Broadway-Sings-in-Times-Square-to-Honor-Stephen-Sondheim-20211128?utm_source=newsletterdaily&utm_medium=email

Music Monday - How does an increasingly data-driven education system affect growth and satisfaction in music learning and performance?

A few weeks ago, I ran into a high school music teacher friend. She has decided to retire at the end of this school year. Why? Well, like many of us, she is of an age where retirement is a possibility. But more significantly, a driving force in her decision was what she perceived to be the increasing demand for data collection across all aspects of the education system. 

This teacher’s retirement will mean a true loss for that school and its students – she is  passionate and dedicated worn down by the demands of the system.

There is no doubt that as teachers we are asked to be increasingly accountable – and that can be a very good thing. But it does seem to come at a cost. For every step of the learning journey there is a marking rubric to be filled out, both in schools and in universities now. Again, a marking rubric does provide a level of moderation, but can it ever tell the whole story?

For many years I have prepared year 12 secondary school students for their exit performance exams in music. We spend years 11 and 12 practising songs with a close eye on the marking rubric and ensuring that melodies and rhythms (to name just two criteria) are accurately performed. I teach in a specialist music theatre program, so this is sometimes at odds with how the songs would be performed in the real world. 

Many of my students go on to audition for places in the various tertiary music theatre courses across Australia. Those auditions take place around the same time as the performance exams but have very different expectations. It is much less about the accurate processing of notational information and much more about demonstrating potential in story-telling and vocal flexibility. The final voice lessons for year 12 students tend to be a slightly crazy mix of ‘now let’s try the song in exam style’ or ‘sing it this time as you will for your audition’. Two versions of the same song – the less ‘correct’ one often the more authentic.

Similarly, the tertiary course where I teach music theatre and acting students,  has taking up the use of marking rubrics for assessment. For the final year music theatre students there is often a disconnect between preparing for the assessment and preparing for their careers as performers.

I don’t pretend to have answers. I know we needed to move on from the old days of ‘I just know what an A grade sounds like’ or ‘this student deserves an A; they have worked so hard’ to something more accountable. But in so doing, have we sacrificed a little of the joy? I hope not. 

My soon to be retired teacher friend mentioned at the start worked incessantly to maintain the joy. But in doing that she perhaps burnt herself out.

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 - Koolbardi Wer Wardong

The world’s first Noongar opera is coming to the Awesome Festival next week!

Western Australian music teachers are familiar with the sound and work of award-winning songwriters and storytellers, Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse, whose performances and workshops over recent years have inspired and educated many of us in aspects of Noongar language, culture and music. (Noongar is the language of the first nations people from the southwest of Western Australia.)

It is therefore very exciting to see that their opera, Koolbardi Wer Wardong is part of the upcoming Awesome Festival for children. The theme of the opera is described as one of sibling rivalry. “Koolbardi the Magpie and Wardong the Crow are two very proud, vain, jealous brothers. Watch as their cunning, their rivalry and one-upmanship brings them unstuck in spectacular fashion”.

We do hope that many of you get along to see this world first. The recommended age is 8+.

Also check out the whole program for the Awesome Festival. It is a wonderful opportunity to give kids of all ages an arts enriched holiday experience. (And how lucky are we here on the west coast of Australia that we can enjoy live performance at this time.)

https://awesomearts.com

https://www.waopera.asn.au/shows/events/koolbardi-wer-wardong/

https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/west-australian-opera-commissions-new-noongar-language-work/

https://www.ptt.wa.gov.au/venues/his-majestys-theatre/whats-on/koolbardi-wer-wardong/

https://www.artshub.com.au/2020/07/14/first-opera-sung-entirely-in-noongar-language-commissioned-in-wa-260729/