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.)

Born Sept. 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russia
Died Aug. 9, 1975 in Moscow, Russia

A product of the Bolshevik Revolution, Shostakovich was the most famous of all  Soviet composers. He led a politically and personally troubled life, yet produced some of the century’s most celebrated and frequently performed works even today .

Born into a politically explosive era, with a revolutionary grandfather, leftist trade unionist father and a piano teaching mother, is it any wonder his political and musical wires were crossed? The demons of his life were the political fears and threats which constantly hovered over his career. He was the “darling” of the Soviets one moment and branded a “counter-revolutionary” in his music the next moment. His tumultuous relationship with Stalin was a yoke he could never shed, and his music always involved a dreaded dance with the devil of Soviet censorship and artistic control. His works were officially denounced in 1936 and 1948, and were periodically banned. Yet the ever popular Shostakovich received many accolades during his long career, from both the Russian people and the official Soviet state.

Shostakovich composed 15 symphonies, among them the popular “War” Symphonies Nos. 4 – 9 (which some thought were his musical protest against the crimes of Stalin), 15 string quartets, 6 concertos, numerous other chamber and orchestral works, piano pieces including 2 sonatas and 24 preludes and fugues for piano (like Bach),  2 operas and an operetta, 3 ballets, songs, cantatas, oratorios, stage and film music. His music ran the emotional gamut, from “warlike” and harshly propagandist to lyric and personal.  Probably because of his “pact with the Soviet devil,” Shostakovich’s place in musical history is controversial. While musicologist David Fanning in Grove writes that “he succeeded in forging a musical language of colossal emotional power,” Pierre Boulez dismissed him as a second or  even third-rate Mahler. English composer/musicologist Robin Holloway described his music as "battleship-grey in melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure; in content all rhetoric and coercion." But the reality of Shostakovich’s musical achievement should be judged apart from harsh political reactions to the man who, as many perceived, lacked the courage of his private convictions in standing up to Communist censorship and control. Please enjoy the richness and the inventiveness of his music, and judge not the man in political hindsight.

TESTIMONY: STORY OF SHOSTAKOVICH DVD

Tony Palmer’s film stars Ben Kingsley as Shostakovich. The film dramatizes the life of the Russian composer who opposed the directives of Stalin and defied him with his music. Palmer sensitively uses Shostakovich’s music to enhance the drama, and to deepen our understanding of how the composer felt about what was happening in his homeland. With excerpts from 11 symphonies and more, performed by the London Philharmonic. 151 min. DVD 5943 $29.95
                  (available at Music in Motion)

An interesting footnote to musical history:

A lighter side of Shostakovich was his passionate love of soccer, as heard in his 1929 ballet The Golden Age when he recreates an actual soccer match. Enjoy Shostakovich’s energetic soccer match–a first in music history and a thrillingly athletic display of programmatic music.  (In this Soviet ballet the Communist team travels abroad to compete with the “capitalists,” and you can guess who wins!)

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.

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. 

These are hard times, especially in nearly bankrupt California. But are we content to see the California legislature gut the heart (i.e., the arts) out of education? The arts and foreign languages are fundamental to education, especially in the world we live in today. If creative thinking and global communications were ever needed in this world, we need them now. And the beleaguered California legislature chooses to eliminate these high school graduation requirements for what reasons? Is there really much money to be saved by going after educational fields that are laughably underfunded to start with? According to the author of this legislation, “the intent … is to increase high school graduation rates, which is an ever-pressing issue.” Is he serious? Is the goal of “graduating” more students overriding the goal of educating them? But this unfortunate piece of legislation passed the California Assembly 76 to 0, and is now headed for the state senate. Email them a copy of our Declaration of Music and the Arts to remind them of all the ways that the arts are essential in education.

Take the LA Times poll on whether California should drop arts and language requirements for high school graduation. Read more about bill AB2446 then send a message to the politicians who are playing with our kids’ education, which seems to be getting dumb and dumber. Even if you are not from California, this is a dangerous trend in education that is not confined to that state. Everyone should rally and send a loud and clear message, like we did in Texas: “Don’t mess with our arts.”

President John F. Kennedy hit the nail on the head on the importance of arts in a nation:

“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." 

Musicians are the “dreamers of dreams… the movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems” (Arthur O’Shaughnessy). One such “mover and shaker” is the conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who is currently leading a  musical revolution that affects thousands of young lives in Venezuela. Perhaps the repressive, authoritarian political regime now in power in Venezuela makes the transformative, liberating act of bringing music to thousands of at-risk kids  even more urgent.

This passionate, flamboyant 28-year-old conductor debuted Oct. 8 as new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to a wildly enthusiastic audience of 18,000. Dudamel also continues his 10th year with the phenomenal Simon Bolivar Orchestra, which resulted from a nationwide music education program which trained Dudamel along with thousands of young musicians, many from the poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods. (See The Promise of Music DVD).  Let’s hope he can help foment a similar musical revolution in the USA.

THE PROMISE OF MUSIC DVD. Gustavo Dudamel, director of Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra and classical music’s hottest young star,  showcases a musical revolution  that is the envy of the world. This incredible orchestra, one of the country’s many youth orchestras, is the result of a music education program called “El Sistema” that begins early in life and involves thousands of students,  many  from the nation’s poorest crime-ridden neighborhoods. “El Sistema”, founded in 1975 by far-sighted musical “mover and shaker” José Antonio Abreu, has opened the doors of classical music to thousands (including Dudamel himself), providing music education and free instruments to those who could not otherwise afford it.  Follow Director Dudamel and young musicians of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, in their day-to-day lives, in rehearsal, and in performance. Never again doubt the power of music to shape lives when you witness the most talked about phenomenon in the musical world today. 155 min. DVD

El Sistema: Music to Change Life  DVD 5092  $39.95 is now available at Music in Motion.

MAO’S LAST DANCER:  Complete Autobiography

Mao’s Last Dancer, the autobiography of one of the world’s best ballet dancers, is among the most exciting and inspiring stories you will ever read about a performing artist. Li Cunxin, from a desperately poor northern Chinese province, is chosen at age 11 from millions of children to attend Madame Mao’s Beijing Dance Academy during the Cultural Revolution. Though painfully difficult, Li persists and his training pays off when he is chosen to travel to America to dance. Seizing his opportunity for freedom, he courageously defects. Told by Li, this book offers a great insight into Chinese culture and an individual’s personal determination to gain political and artistic freedom. 490 pp. Paperback 6739  $17.00  order now

MAO’S LAST DANCER: Young Reader’s Edition

This young reader’s edition of the true story of ballet dancer Li Cunxin is well-edited and has plenty of exciting detail for Gr. 6-9. 304 pp. Hardback 6738  $16.99  order now

DANCING FOR FREEDOM: The True Story of Mao’s Last Dancer        

This children’s book, illustrated by Anne Spudvilas, tells the story of Li Cunxin for ages 4-8.  “As a boy in China, Li identified with the trapped frog in one of his father’s stories: ‘Even though the frog jumped and hopped, the well was just too deep.’ Li’s own leaps proved more successful; his selection for a rigorous dance-training program led him from his impoverished village to ballet stardom” (review from Booklist). Hardback 6737  $16. 95  order now

MAO’s LAST DANCER: The Movie

The movie and DVD has not yet released in North America, but Music in Motion will make it available as soon as it releases.

FILM SYNOPSIS/TRAILER from the official Mao’s Last Dancer website:

“From internationally acclaimed Australian film director Bruce Beresford comes the inspirational true story of a small boy’s extraordinary journey from poverty to international stardom, from a grueling apprenticeship as a classical dancer in communist China to the glory of creative freedom in America. But, there is a painful price to be paid for his quest for self expression. Mao’s Last Dancer captures the intoxicating effects of first love and celebrity, the pain of exile, and ultimately the triumph of individual endeavor over ideology. Filmed in China, the US and Australia and with a brilliant performance from Chi Cao as Li Cunxin, Mao’s Last Dancer is an exhilarating exploration of what it means to be free.”

Born December 10, 1908 in Avignon, France
Died  April 27, 1992 in Clichy, France

“I give bird-songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none.” —Olivier Messiaen

The Musician who Loved Birds

Olivier Messiaen was perhaps the most influential French composer since Debussy. He redefined avant-garde, although his highly original works often reflect conservative values of spirituality, nature, and  beauty that set his music apart from the harsher trends of the 20th century. While others “musicalized” the harsh mechanized sounds of urban life, war, and the industrial age, Messiaen preferred nature, and most of all, birds.  As a passionate ornithologist, he painstakingly transcribed birdsongs, particularly the songbirds of France. Birds were the true musicians, he felt, and their songs were transformed exquisitely in his music, as seen in Catalogue de Oiseaux (1958).

Messiaen enjoyed a happy childhood filled with music and poetry. At age 10 after discovering Debussy he declared his intention to become a composer.  His mother penned a long colorful poem to him before he was born, and the synaesthesia which caused the composer to experience sounds as colors (as did fellow composers Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin) he attributed to her. “When I hear music, I hear colors,” he said. “When I compose, I see the colors as I see the sounds.” He described one of his harmonic sequences as changing “from blue striped with green to black spotted with red and gold, by way of diamond, emerald, purplish-blue, with a dominant pool of orange studded with milky white.” (Once he got a stomach ache at a ballet when the violet lighting clashed with his color conception of the Key of G!) His father,  a teacher of English, translated Shakespeare into French. As a child, Messiaen delighted in adapting Shakespeare plays for family productions.  Considering that Shakespeare wrote more about birds than any other poet,  is it any wonder that birds would sing in  Messiaen’s music more than in any other composer’s?

Messiaen underwent a rigorous classical musical education at the Paris Conservatoire (1919-30), studying with Paul Dukas, Charles-Marie Widor, and Marcel Dupré.  His education came full circle when he taught there from 1941-78, instructing such influential musicians as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, and Iannis Xenakis. The most profound influence in his life was his strict Roman Catholicism, which he expressed strongly in his music and in his 61-year tenure as organist of Eglise de la Trinité in Paris. [It was at La Trinité where I was privileged to hear Messiaen at the organ during the annual memorial service Nadia Boulanger held for her sister Lily Boulanger; this venerable neo-gothic church was at my metro stop during my junior year in Paris, near Mlle. Boulanger’s home in nearby Montmartre where I was privileged to attend her weekly music analysis classes.]  

Messiaen’s deep spiritual faith was akin to Bach’s. Both felt that the essential goal of music was to glorify God. “I want to write music that is an act of faith, a music that is about everything without ceasing to be about God,” declared Messiaen. When his faith was tested during his 2-year captivity in a German POW camp, he composed his most important work Quartet for the End of Time (1941). Written for piano, clarinet, violin and cello–the only 4 instruments available to him in the prison camp, this intensely mystical work had a profound effect on 5000 fellow prisoners in the camp, where it was performed for the first time.

Messiaen’s compositional innovations included the use of Greek meters, Hindu rhythms, rhythmic palindromes, adventurous harmonies, and a vivid use of color in his orchestrations through unusual percussion such as the ondes martenot (a vacuum tube instrument that was successor to the spooky theremin). He  also briefly experimented with electronic music (Fête des belles eaux, 1937) and serialism (Quatre études de rythme, 1949). His legacy includes  works for organ, piano, voice, orchestra, and an almost 6-hour-long opera (Saint Francois d’Assise, 1975-1983).  He was in ill health when he finally completed what he thought would be his final work,  but how fitting is it that St. Francis is the subject of his only opera. (Hear St. Francis’s ecstatic sermon to the birds, Act II, Scene 6). In this gentle saint Messiaen found someone who quietly worshipped God and passionately loved nature and birds as much as himself.

Biographers Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone reflect on Messiaen’s techniques of transcribing and composing with birdsongs:

Here’s a good children’s book on Messiaen:

Music for the End of Time

by Jen Bryant, illus. by Beth Peck

“In my hour of gloom, when I am suddenly aware of my own futility. . .what is left for me but to seek out the true, lost face of music somewhere off in the forest. . .among the birds.” -Messiaen

This poetic children’s biography  reveals the small miracle of how French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote his most important work, Quartet for the End of Time. Imprisoned in a German POW camp, Olivier longs for his family, friends, and home. . .but most of all he misses music. A chance encounter with a nightingale and a German officer, however, provides him with the opportunity to write music again. When a make-shift concert on broken-down instruments takes place in the camp in 1941, Quartet for the End of Time (and the song of the nightingale which is in it) offers a message of hope and beauty that inspires Messiaen’s 5000 fellow prisoners.