To create, one must first imagine; to imagine, one must first learn to see, to listen, to feel, to perceive. Music and the arts are the cornerstone of education in the broadest sense. They open our eyes and ears, develop and transform us personally, connect us emotionally with others, and offer a universal bridge of understanding in a troubled world. Music and the arts play a lifetime role as a child develops into adulthood. They help us integrate body, mind, and spirit, and help us forge bonds with others. The arts encourage us to explore who we are and what we stand for, inspire us to discover our “better angels” as individuals and as societies, and help us overcome barriers of language, generations, and geography to assert our essential humanity. The arts are a beacon of freedom and common cause, and have been the “movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems,” reasserting the universal rights of the human spirit whenever and wherever they are threatened.

From the first soothing sounds of a mother’s lullaby to the bright colors and comforting touch of a favorite blanket or toy, the miraculous world of infancy begins to open up. Babies react to sights and sounds around them, connecting emotions and meanings to what they see and hear. Soon they interact with the outer world as they enter a creative phase of imitating external sounds, rhythms, movements, smiles, gestures. They are, in effect, hooked on the elements of art that surround them: the lines, shapes, textures, colors, patterns, movements, rhythms, expressions, and forms that connect them to their ever-expanding world. The arts help wire and integrate young brains for lifelong learning–energizing and connecting the body, mind, and feelings. An instinctive love of music, poetry, and dramatic play is fostered through nursery rhymes, singing, dancing, and rhythm games, just as the gloriously messy and colorful world of art beckons with unlimited possibilities in finger paints, play dough, bubbles, and blocks. Storytelling, tactile toys and books, pretend games, and games of hiding and discovery like Peekaboo and Hide ‘n Seek stir imaginations and add excitement in the fantastic fray of a toddler’s perceptions. But none of this is mere child’s play: early exposure to the arts lays a complex groundwork of mental, physical, and emotional connections that opens the door to a lifetime of curiosity, learning, experimenting, problem solving, understanding, and creativity.

The arts are at the heart of every child. And the arts must be at the heart of education. If we choose to ignore children’s basic instincts for music and art at early ages, or fail to nourish their innate love of the arts throughout their education as they mature, we will as a society have “missed the beat” and “missed the boat.” The ancient Greeks knew the value of arts in education. Aristotle thought the cornerstones of education should be music for the mind and spirit and gymnastics for the body. Centuries later John F. Kennedy expressed our need for the arts this way:
“The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation’s purpose. . .and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.”

Music in Motion’s 2012 catalog hopes to be true to the spirit of both Aristotle and Kennedy, by presenting the best in music and movement education for all ages, along with complementary art, dance, and creative dramatics, to redirect the arts “to the center of a nation’s purpose,” where they belong. The arts, like the heart, pulsate at the center of our common humanity. They are, simply, our life blood.

After months of deadly trench warfare, on Dec. 24, 1914, German and British soldiers in Belgium suddenly ceased hostilities and, through the singing of carols, celebrated Christmas together. This film documents their spontaneous musical truce with eyewitness reports, proving that "people who make music together cannot be enemies, at least not while the music lasts" (Hindemith). 
The Christmas Truce DVD, available from Music in Motion, documents this incredible event, when music transcended the ravages of war to unite foes in a spirit of common  humanity to discover true meaning of Christmas.

American folk singer John McCutcheon immortalized the 1914 Christmas truce in his moving ballad, “Christmas in the Trenches”:

I heartily recommend the following illustrated book for children, which tells the true story of the Christmas Truce in a language children can understand:

In Flanders Field

By Norma Jorgensen and Brian Harrison-Lever. On Christmas morning, the guns stop firing. A robin is caught in the barbed wire of no-man’s land on the front. The soldier makes a choice that transforms into a peaceful moment of sharing Silent Night across enemy lines. The famous World War I title poem of John McCrae is a fitting conclusion to this illustrated book for children.
Hardback 2496  $16.95 (available at Music in Motion)

Also recommended is The Story of Silent Night DVD. It recounts the history of the carol Silent Night and includes a re-enactment of a spontaneous World War II music-induced Christmas Day truce between the Germans and Americans, similar to the WWI Christmas truce at Flanders Field:

The Story of Silent Night DVD

A live-action retelling of how the best-loved carol was written on a snowy night in 1818, and how it has affected generations since. Filmed in an Austrian winter wonderland, it features the Vienna Boys Choir.
The transcendent power of music is revealed in a deeply moving (and true) episode on Christmas Eve during World War II. American and German soldiers lay down their arms for a shared moment of peace, uniting their voices in this universal carol. For all ages! 80 min. DVD 5491  (avail. at Music in Motion)

Personal Note: My young nephew just shipped to Afghanistan. My thoughts and prayers are with him and all the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and wherever lives are at risk in battle. May the spirit of the “Silent Night” Christmas truce be with them. "People who make music together cannot be enemies, at least not while the music lasts" (Hindemith). (Oppressive dictators have always known this, which is why music is often banned in times of repression, as it was under Taliban rule of Afghanistan and during Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China.)

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) wrote numerous concertos, many of them for the young ladies who resided in the Venetian orphanage where Vivaldi was employed for most of his working career. (Many of these “orphans” were daughters of affluent  noblemen and their mistresses, and they lived in very comfortable circumstances and were given excellent musical training.)  Some of Vivaldi’s concertos are highly descriptive, including his most famous “Four Seasons” Concertos.  Vivaldi himself wrote descriptive titles and poems that accompanied each movement of the concertos in the Four Seasons cycle. Here is a translation of the titles and verses that accompanied Concerto #3 in F Major, “Autumn”:

Movement 1: Allegro (Peasant Dance and Song)
The peasant celebrates with song and dance the harvest safely gathered in.
The cup of Bacchus flows freely, and many find their relief in deep slumber.

Movement 2: Adagio molto (Sleeping after the harvest celebration)
The singing and the dancing die away
as cooling breezes fan the pleasant air,
inviting all to sleep
without a care.

Movement 3: Allegro (The Hunt)
The hunters emerge at dawn,
ready for the chase,
with horns and dogs and cries.
Their quarry flees while they give chase.
Terrified and wounded, the prey struggles on,
but, harried, dies?

Now enjoy the music of “Autumn,” as performed in the National Botanical Gardens of Wales by Julia Fischer on violin, accompanied by the  Academy of St. Martin’s in the Field.

Concerto No.3 in F Major, RV 293, "AUTUMN"

Tips for Teacher

1. Ask students if Vivaldi’s titles and verses for the movements are reflected in his actual music? Ask them to point out events in the poem when they hear them in the music. Discuss the tempos for each movement, and why Vivaldi chose them to express his musical and poetic ideas.
2. Discuss what a harvest festival is, and what it would mean to the peasants. Why would music be important during a festival?
3. Invent your own “peasant dance” and perform it to the music.
4. Show the class Pieter Breugel’s painting “The Peasant Dance.” Discuss the feasting, dancing, and revelry. Ask why the peasants might be celebrating, and what season of the year it might be.

5. Discuss what autumn means to children and families today.What events do they enjoy that occur only in this season?
6. Ask students to write a poem about autumn.
7. Is there an American holiday that happens in the fall, where we enjoy a feast?
8. Celebrate the changing of the season with a “listening” walk, and discuss sights, sounds, and the weather, to see what signs of autumn you can find. (And when you get home, pour a cup of hot apple cider and listen to Vivaldi’s “Autumn” again!)

Don’t underestimate the power of either sports or music when it comes to exciting a crowd. Even as a tormented composer writing under the harsh restrictions and demands of Communism, in his 1929 ballet  The Golden Age big-time soccer fan and sometime soccer referee Shostakovich recreated a soccer match. In this ballet, a communist soccer team travels to the West to compete against the evil “capitalists” (real boiler-plate geo-political plot!).  Listen to his brilliant recreation of a fast-paced soccer match:

I would love to have seen this ballet scene. Wonder if the choreographer was a soccer fan too? Probably so. . .

Tips for Music Teachers:

1. Play this musical soccer match for your students, and see how many can guess what sport is being depicted. 

2. Ask students to guess why the composer chose to include this work in a ballet, rather than a symphony, opera, or choral work.

3. Ask students to choreograph & perform in teams their own interpretation of Shostakovich’s soccer match.

4. Ask students to research other examples where composers have depicted sports events in their music (and share them with us!).

5. Ask students to describe what music and sports have in common.

6. Show students the vuvuzela, the obnoxiously loud, monotone horn used at this year’s World Cup.  This is a great seque to open the discussion on noise pollution and hearing protection! (Hope they ban the horn for the next World Cup!)

There’s a lot more to World Cup soccer music than national anthems and the penetrating blare of “vuvuzela” horns.  WQXR classical FM station, highlights the top 5 soccer pieces from 100 years of soccer-inspired classical music.

A scholar in England just announced his discovery of a secret music code in the writings of Plato.  As a closeted follower of Pythagoras, whose heretical beliefs threatened traditional religion, Plato believed that music and mathematics were closely related, and that music was a reflection of the mathematical principles that governed the universe. Pythagoras codified the mathematical ratios of the musical intervals in the 12-tone Greek scale. Plato, like his mentor Pythagoras,  believed the “harmony of the spheres” resulted from movement of the stars and planets, which orbited according to mathematical equations that created musical pitches. 

Jay Kennedy of Manchester, England, has discovered that every 12th line of Plato’s original manuscript scrolls includes a passage or reference to music, that possibly sent a hidden code to other followers of Pythagoras. Thus the 12-tone Greek scale underpinned Plato’s writings, just as music and mathematics laid the philosophical foundations of the Pythagorean universe.

Read more about this fascinating discovery and its implications on the relationship of music, science, and philosophy that resonate today.

When famed Broadway songwriter Jason Bert Brown discovered his songs were being “traded” freely online by those who had never purchased a legal copy, he thoughtfully requested that the traders stop the illegal trading. Read this fascinating exchange with a recalcitrant yet extremely bright and articulate teenager. Eleanor’s teenage sense of entitlement is absolutely breathtaking. Her arguments are devoid of any sense of morality (other than her own moral outrage at being asked to remove the illegal songs), yet her rationalizations at stealing other people’s music without paying the $3.99 download fee are worthy of a silver-tongued trial lawyer.  

Please read this exchange in it’s entirety, and more importantly, read it to your own kids and students. I would love to hear from you on how Eleanor’s slippery moral and “aesthetic” arguments for copyright theft either resonate with or repel other teens. The technology is in place for easy illegal “trading” of music: now it’s time to work on how to instill in teens (and adults, I might add) the sense of responsibility, ethics, and control needed to understand and appreciate why copyright violation, though easy, is both illegal and immoral.

This dramatic battle between the composer and the teen is itself worthy of a Broadway play, and a Pulitzer. Read it now:

  FIGHTING WITH TEENS: A Copyright Story

Here are links & dates for jazz festivals around the world, so plan a trip around an  enticing jazz venue that beckons you to kick back and enjoy live jazz at its convivial best.

Jazz Festivals in USA

Jazz Festivals in Canada

UK Jazz Festivals

European Jazz Festivals

Worldwide jazz festivals are also listed geographically, but without dates, in Wikipedia. Their list is admittedly incomplete, but at least there are links to festivals in all countries where you can find more info.

It’s live performances that make jazz so exciting. You can’t step twice into the same river of jazz, because its improvisatory nature makes it ever changing. No artist will ever perform the same piece the same way again. Recordings are wonderful to capture some of these moments, but the excitement of jazz is that each live performance offers infinite opportunities for spontaneous combustion into new, unexpected creations. The mind is an amazing thing; the jazz mind is even more so. Those intricately connected musical wires of the brain operate as though on steroids, combining and creating music “on the fly.” And the most amazing thing about a jazz musician is his ability to listen and to communicate with his fellow musicians during a performance. Duke Ellington really nailed it when he said:

“The most important thing I look for in a musician is if he knows how to listen.”

That same ability to listen is what an audience needs to apply at a live jazz performance, knowing you won’t pass this way again. Throw yourself into the music with the same fervor of the “listening” and performing musicians. Jazz is the essence of Now, so listen with all you’ve got, and savor the fleeting moment.

Listening skills should be stock in trade for musicians, but experienced musicians face the same challenges of concentration and active listening that audiences do.  Timothy Walker’s keynote speech at Great Britain’s ISM (Incorporated Society of Musicians) hopefully didn’t fall on tin ears. Walker, Chief Executive of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, realistically addresses the difficulties musicians and audiences face (even composers, conductors, and professional orchestras) in what should be the simple art of listening.  Lend an ear to his complete address:

Understanding and Developing Listening

28 May 2010

In his keynote speech at our annual conference, Timothy Walker explores the theme of listening in terms of the challenges that face orchestras, particularly as they develop audiences for the future.

Timothy Walker

It is a great pleasure for me to be here with you today to give the keynote address for your conference on ‘Listening’. No doubt you can ‘hear’ me but whether or not you will ‘listen’ is another matter. We are all too familiar with a world that is noisy, a world, where we try to block out sounds that we don’t want to hear, where our listening becomes selective.

Yes, there is a distinction between ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’. It’s the same as the distinction we make between ‘looking’ and ‘seeing’. ‘Listening’, as with ‘seeing’, demands a level of concentration far beyond ‘hearing’ or ‘looking’.

Handel believed that he was the one who taught us how to listen. He told Gluck that the English are only interested in beating time. ‘I have to teach them to listen.’

Interestingly, Stravinsky confesses in his memoirs that his early interest in the orchestra was visual rather than aural. He was attracted by the bright and polished instruments and the sheer spectacle of seeing an orchestra on stage. For him, the visual was an indispensible part of the whole experience. Seeing the bodily effort involved in producing the sound made it all the more vivid for him.

Daniel Barenboim would not agree so readily. In his 2006 Reith Lecture for the BBC he made the point that ‘we now live in a culture where we are bombarded with imagery and information, and are neglecting our ears in favour of our eyes. Everywhere there are competing demands for our attention and so often, somehow, we fail to find the time simply to listen to music for its own sake.’

It was in part, I believe, a response to the ideas expounded in this lecture that The Royal Philharmonic Society established a programme called ‘Hear Here’ in 2008 which operates through a wonderfully interactive website, live concerts throughout the country and programmes on Classic FM.

How much do our players listen? Quite a lot it would seem because they very quickly comment on the concert platforms where they can’t hear their colleagues playing. Many conductors comment on the listening skills of LPO players. Certainly the annual four months of playing for the opera at Glyndebourne is one reason for their heightened listening skills. They are used to hearing, and following, the singers.

But the high stress and constant playing, often of new music or unfamiliar works, must have an impact on the orchestral players’ listening. Shelagh Sutherland, Co-ordinator of Aural Training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, makes the point that over-worked musicians rely on the adrenalin rush to make performances exciting and don’t have sufficient rehearsal time to allow them to get beyond their notes and to really listen to other players.

This is perhaps why the string quartet is the apogee of music making. Four members who spend a life-time together music making, playing the same works over and over again to the point where their part is instinctive and the performance is all about listening to the other parts to make the refined ‘whole’.

When we listen, when we really concentrate on listening, how do we do so without taking on the implications of previous listenings? In other words, how do we keep our ears innocent?

We listen to Britten’s War Requiem and we understand the subject and the emotional content but we take our seat on a British Airways flight and the duet from Lakme no longer has anything to do with the opera. We hear the slow movement of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto and there is no room for original thought because we see a black and white image of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard parting at a railway station.

When we teach a new piece of music to our student we are teaching our interpretation of the work. Are we prepared to acknowledge that our student may hear the work differently? Are we prepared to put aside our preconceptions and accept that someone else, a fresh mind, might have an interpretation as valid as our own, however young that fresh mind might be?

Are we then listening to what the composer intended us to hear or what the conductor intends us to hear? You only have to look at www.henrysrecords.com to see the immense difference in the timing of recorded works. A symphony can differ by 10 minutes’ duration. Can this really be possible?

I recall a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall in September 2008. There was a subsequent tour of the programme of Scandinavian countries, which Vladimir Jurowski pulled out of because of the birth of his second child. Rhozdestvensky took over and I reported to Vladimir that with the addition of the Strauss’s Metamorphosen the concert took 25 minutes more than the London performance. Vladimir’s response was simply: ‘Yes, he hears the music differently’.

What does the composer think? We asked our new composer-in-residence, Julian Anderson, who said: ‘What I try to do is not to dumb down but to try to use the sonic surface, the sensual side of listening, as an in-road to get people thinking about other facets as well. The fact is that some music requires more effort, and I think the fear factor is the main problem here, especially in contemporary art music. Some of the clichés that are voiced about new music should be directly addressed – for example the assertion that there is no melody. It depends very much what you mean by a tune. What I should like to do is to expand an audience’s appreciation of what a tune is and what a melody can be. I’d like to awaken their listening to texture, orchestral colour, atmosphere and harmony. One problem in Britain is that there is a great resistance to the idea that music – especially new music – can be viewed as part of an intelligent forum of culture. I go abroad a lot, and it is not a strange idea in France or Germany. What I would like to encourage is thinking as well as listening – active listening. This is all part of making music a component of general culture.’

How are orchestras in the UK developing the listening skills of young people?

We certainly recognise the importance of giving every child the opportunity to hear a live orchestral concert at least once during their school years. All of the orchestras in Britain have signed up to offer this by 2017. We have mapped our current programmes for schools in England and already reach 50% of children. With more schools’ concerts in major centres and the help of chamber orchestras to reach smaller regional centres we believe we can meet our goal.

We prefer that the concerts are at the main public concert halls so that children understand that these are public facilities for their use; that we break down barriers to entering our halls in the hope that the child might encourage the parents to bring the family to a weekend concert, something outside of the school experience. We want to give every child the opportunity to hear the power of an orchestra and to experience the emotional intensity of music making. We want to instill in each child a desire to listen to more music and perhaps to take up a musical instrument.

In all our education programmes we meet with the same response; that music tuition increases the concentration of children for all of their subjects not just the music one. Teachers are convinced that music training – even very basic teaching of rhythm, melody and harmony through simple instruments or singing – has an advantageous effect on higher grades in all subjects.

The LPO’s three FUNharmonic concerts for young children attract a capacity crowd but the listening experience is not just about the concert. The day starts well before and goes on for up to an hour and a half after the concert. The hall’s public spaces are given over to a variety of musical activities for the young concert-goers that are designed as an integral part of the FUNharmonic’s experience. There is something to suit every child’s age and interests.

Of course this is all meant to be fun, but it’s also designed with a specific educational objective; the child’s future musical development. The boy wishing to play the trumpet is shown how to purse his lips and blow. Then he’s handed the mouthpiece and encouraged to use the same pursed lip to blow into it. Only when he’s practiced enough to produce a sound is he given the instrument . The result is that he can produce a few notes, and feels satisfied with his success. Hopefully, he has the confidence to pester his parents to allow him to learn the instrument. We have information available to take away that provides contact details for teachers, purchase of instruments and so on.

I have observed with other ensembles that we have taken to hospitals, nursing homes, schools and prisons that often the best response from the audience is for the very contemporary works rather than what we might consider to be the easier, more melodic classics.

We need to put aside our preconceptions about classical music and understand that for a young audience their interests are much more fluid, much more eclectic. Recently the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment presented Beethoven at the Roundhouse in London. It was a new and different young audience that would not have attended the concert at the Royal Festival Hall. They could come and go as they pleased, talk, drink, and whatever. It was a huge success.

But I do wonder, were they listening as we might define ‘listening’ here today? Or were they moved by the rhythmic pulse and the power of the sound of many instruments? Could their response have been more Handel’s claim that we like to beat in time or Stravinsky’s fascination with the visual colour of an orchestra? Were they hearing the sound rather than listening intently to the music?

We have become accustomed to the late 19^th century practice of paying homage to music and its execution. We don’t think it appropriate to talk, eat or drink during the performance, or even clap between movements. We have been trained to accept the best conditions for concentrating on listening. Are our experiments to take our music to the young pandering to what we perceive to be their interests? Are we so concerned about getting a young audience, creating the audience of the future, that we would prejudice the very music we are promoting? Are we being regressive in not insisting that the concert venue should be totally silent?

These are issues for discussion and I hope you may have the time to do so during your conference.

Can I leave you with the thoughts of two other leading British musicians.

The violinist, Nicola Benedetti says: ‘Listening well is a discipline, one that can become lazy unless we are reminded of the energy and focus that it requires’

And the pianist Paul Lewis says: ‘Hearing is something that most of us are fortunate enough to be able to do with no problem. However, to listen perceptively – without preconceptions or expectations – is a real challenge for anybody, and is something that requires patience, skill, and an infinite amount of practice!’

If you have listened, then thank you. If you have only heard the sound of a voice, then I rest my case.

Timothy Walker
Chief Executive of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) and Chair of the Association of British Orchestras (ABO)

_______________________________________________________________________

Six Teaching Tips for Music Teachers & Parents to encourage active listening (this is from me, Mary Ann Stewart, inspired by Mr. Walker’s address):

1. Ask kids to listen closely to a musical selection with their eyes open; then listen to the same selection with their eyes closed. Have them discover and discuss the differences. (also see the corollary to this activity in #6 below)

2. Divide the class into listening teams. Ask each group to focus on a different element: the melody, rhythm, harmony, tempo, instrumentation, lyrics, etc. and discuss afterward their findings. Then have them re-listen to the work, from various perspectives, and swap teams. This listening activity can be done on easy to more sophisticated levels, depending on the group. This presents a challenge not only of hearing but of remembering the sequence of musical events, and also of learning to articulate in words what they hear.

3. Ask the class to conduct the music they are listening to. This was a technique Robert Abramson used at Juilliard, when he asked the entire class of advanced music students to simultaneously conduct in order to discover the meter during live classroom student performances. It was hilarious to see that many of these Juilliard music majors could not discern the meter during these performances,  because the performers themselves were inadequately conveying the metric flow. Dance rhythms from a Bach suite could be performed as rhythmically vague as a Debussy nocturne!  When this happened, Abramson had the entire class perform the Baroque dance on which the piece was based. The newly enlightened pianist was then asked to play again the work, this time with an understanding of the underlying dance pattern and the metrics of the piece.  This revealing exercise made Abramson’s point that the performer has the responsibility of understanding and respecting the differences in musical styles and in conveying the metric and musical flow accordingly. Otherwise the listener doesn’t have a fighting chance at understanding the music, which melts amorphously like the Salvador Dali watch, and fades into the Debussian “Nuages” of our consciousness.

4. Ask kids to move to the music, conveying either the feelings the music provokes in them, or what they interpret the music to be expressing. You will be amazed at how instinctive young children are at understanding the underlying gestures, emotions, and movements of the music.  Just as babies recognize mood, emotional expressions, and physical gestures long before they understand language, so will young children respond with authenticity and feeling when asked to listen to the music “with their whole bodies.”  They “get” music a lot easier than adults, because their ears at this age are little sponges on steroids, soaking up the world around them.

5. Give your kids (and yourself) some periods of total quiet during the day. (And turn off that TV and stereo at night too!). We live in a noisy, nonstop roar of invasive sounds.  Without periods of silence, kids learn to automatically shut down their hearing in order to protect themselves from the noisy onslaught of the world around them.  So surround active listening experiences with quiet times, so kids learn when and “how to turn on their ears.” Otherwise, the defense mechanism of shutting out the noisy world and learning “how not to listen” is the result of a non-stop background of sound (even music).

6. Link the eyes and ears for intensive listening. This can best be experienced at live musical events. Try to link the visual source with the sound, so your eyes help you listen. Just as Stravinsky could hear the music better by watching the instruments and performers, so can we. That is one reason attending live  performances is always better than recorded media. A child will experience a live concert with his whole being and memory apparatus. Listening to a recording is not the same thing. The intensity and the immediateness of live music are essential. Let the eyes assist the ears, rather than distract them. It takes visual as well as aural discipline to sharpen our listening skills. Following the symphonic flow of events by watching the instruments and performers in an orchestra can be a breathtaking listening experience. 

If you thought boomwhackers were just for kids, think again.
Better still, listen to the percussion group Plastik Musik in their astounding Boomwhacker performance:

The first time I met Craig Ramsell, creator of the Boomwhackers, was  in Phoenix, Arizona, about 15 years ago at a music education conference.  At the time, I knew his newly created pitched plastic tubes called Boomwhackers would be destined for a big role in music classrooms. In fact, it took the music education world by storm, and there is scarcely a music classroom anywhere today in the USA without a set of Boomwhackers.  A whole new wave of Boomwhackers educational materials soon flooded the market, including books, games, musicals, and CDs, boosting the popularity of these colorful pitched instrument tubes.

  The Boomwhackers boom was further inspired by the popularity of the off-Broadway percussion sensation called STOMP (who used rubber tubes in one of their famous routines).  Like STOMP, which is still going strong in New York and on worldwide tours, the Boomwhackers craze continues to invade the planet.

But if you are one of the few people on earth without a set of Boomwhackers, mention the PromoCode “Boom” when you order any set of Boomwhackers and/or related Boomwhacker materials at www.musicmotion.com for a 15% discount (offer good through July 15).  Don’t miss Music in Motion’s Boomwhacker Flashcards: For Movement, Singing, Ear Training, and Pre-Reading Games, which I created for building musicianship, movement, and reading skills.