Where Musical Stuff Speaks Loudly
Posts tagged music
Music is “Not on the Test”
Jul 30th
Ahhh, back to school – and sales relating to this annual ritual of shopping for necessary supplies for school is in full swing in most states. Also, back to school is a willies-invoker, especially for music and art teachers: the No Child Left Behind Act.
Tom Chapin’s song, “Not on the Test,” laments how the arts are shoved into obscurity thanks to a narrow curriculum of language arts (aka English) and math (Science is also another narrow-curriculum subject to a more recent extent.), the only things that are on the test, which is the statewide standardized test. I went to school in an ESE facility in New Jersey, long before NJASK (New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge) rolled in and muddled the educational aspects of statewide public schools. I moved to Florida months before being enrolled in fourth grade, and a year later, I took the long-hated FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) and got descent scores. Along the course of being “taught” the FCAT, I participated in school music ensembles, which are sadly dwindling in size by not only budget cuts (a sign of the dismal economic times, if you ask me), but by increasing numbers of students taking remedial classes in lieu of, say, band. After passing the FCAT at sophomore year, I joined the chorus in my senior year for the purpose of lending a hand and my stewardship to the shrinking music program.
Watching the music video and listening to the lyrics rekindle those memories because I see the standardized tests’ relevance in helping cut out music and arts for more “drill and kill” instructional time for reading and math. In a letter to the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) regarding my sympathies with them as more and more theatrical and ballet companies use muzak, I cited the NCLB’s effects on music education as an underlying cause. I wrote:
The recession is not only the problem – here in America, our schools are faced with No Child Left Behind, in which standardized tests dominate the curricula of public schools. From a standpoint, the time preparing for the tests is cumbersome, and the precious instructional time would have been instead allotted to rehearsing the pit musicians of the spring musical as opposed to drilling the students to master, say, my local assessment measure, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). If the students fail the test, then they have to take a remedial class in lieu of their elective, outsourcing their positions to musicians who pass it. School-wide test scores measure the funding too, and schools who fail would have teacher layoffs and vigorous tutoring, and that reduces school music programs in the first place. Whenever I see a one-man band like OrchEXtra in the pit or hear prerecorded music in musical theater, I remember the problems with the NCLB and how it affects school music.
For last year’s arts assessment test on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the eighth graders compared their answers to those from a test administered in 1997. Compared to 53% in 1997, they scored 51%, and half of them could correctly point out that the clarinet initiates George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with its sultry obbligato. That’s pretty much the same results, but the NCLB’s rigorous standards significantly in a small way affected the results.
And speaking of Howard Goodall, my favorite composer besides Handel, I really wish he was here to spread the word on school music after watching the video and listening to the song because he’s a “national singing ambassador,” and if he can implement singing in primary schools in his native England, he can do pretty much the same right here on our soil.
Too bad he won’t be coming to the US until March next year, the 25th Music in Our Schools Month…
Muzak Accompaniment II: Ballet Hero?
Jul 14th
Courtesy of rutlo
As I mentioned in the last post, last Christmas’s production of the 1989 musical, The Wizard of Oz, irked cellist Adrian Bradbury because canned music accompanied it. Alongside his clarinetist brother and expert witness, the composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle, they testified to the court in a lawsuit against its venue, the Lowry Theatre, that the performance is akin to a costumed karaoke. If they would watch a ballet with the same technological type of musical accompaniment, they’d might as well compare the performance to popular video game Guitar Hero.
Amid a messed-up economy, that’s what orchestra musicians think as ballet companies pare down their budgets. Last month, the Texas Ballet Theater satiated its fundraising goal of $2 million, but there is some bad news – during the 2009-2010 season only, they will use muzak (what I affectionately call “canned music”) for all performances, and patrons will have to wait until the subsequent one to hear a live orchestra accompany tutu-clad women dancing en pointe.
From what I’ve read on the Web, the TBT are not the only ones facing ire from orchestra musicians thanks to the company creating false magic with a boom box in their performance of The Nutcracker. The Pittsburgh Ballet Theater also had its fill of using muzak to liven (no, deaden) a pas de deux in the 2005-2006 season. Their opening performance, Carmen, received outdoor protests from patrons and mainly, the company’s resident orchestra. (They first contacted Musicians Union Local 60-471 to file a labor complaint National Labor Relations Board before joining voices with Akron, Ohio musicians, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Opera Orchestra, and others.) The public response to the ballet was lukewarm too, and one reviewer remarked that her viewing of it “was not much better than her granddaughter’s dance recital, a venue where she expects no more than ‘canned’ music that is consistent with an amateurish performance.” The musicians have a website, Keep Pittsburgh Ballet Theater Music Live!, and I took the time to write what I think on the guestbook. I also looked at those who reviewed that season’s performances of The Nutcracker, and I agree with a lot of them.
As a child growing up in New Jersey, I went to see The Nutcracker at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Milburn and Cinderella at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC). I enjoyed those performances and found them so memorable, and it’s mostly due to the live orchestras in their pits below. If it weren’t for me seeing flutes, oboes, and French horns at a young age before the overture commences the flurry of tutus and jetes, I would had remarked that either performance would had been shoddy compared to my dance recitals at Montclair High. Adrian Bradbury, who criticized the Lowry Theatre’s production of The Wizard of Oz for using muzak, would had sat with me and basked in the auras of the two performances because the music accompaniment were both live!
To me, using muzak is perfectly fine during amateur dance recitals and some competitions but in a context of a professionally-staged ballet, I’d recommend that the companies would use it very sparingly, and I would deem a few “rock” ballets as exceptions. To see who agrees with me or not, I have contacted musical theater writers George Stiles and Anthony Drewe (Mary Poppins, Honk!), Stephen Keeling (Maddie, Heidi), and personal favorite, Howard Goodall (The Dreaming, The Hired Man), to each have their say on the issue of piped music accompanying operas, professional musical theater performances, and ballets (I mean, not the rock ones, but cherished ones like the aforementioned Carmen) in my future posts. I’m not really picky on piped music, per se, but I truly believe that there is a time and place for them.
So, what do you think of the issue of piped music at the ballet, except “rock” ones? Please voice your say on it, if you have the chance.
That One Day in Our Lives
Jul 8th
Michael Jackson’s song, “One Day in Your Life,” is a ballad about a loss of a friend, and the lyrics say that although he or she is gone, he or she will be in people’s hearts and memories. People remember the person as more of a good friend, more like a lifelong companion, only that he or she is distant from them. This was sung back in 1975, during the time when he touched Philippine soil and when my mother personally saw him in a concert.
On July 7, 2009, this song was more relevant than ever – fans of all walks of life, even those who are not too interested in the King of Pop as I am, watched his funeral from the comfort of their homes online or TV, in stadiums, movie theaters, bars, pubs, on Times Square, or (if they were lucky to have a gold wristband and ticket) in the solemn aura of Staples Center in Los Angeles. The more I listened to the song, shortly after the funeral, the more relevant the lyrics. I knew that very instant that although he has left us, he will be in our hearts. God bless Michael.
Surely – Jackson Was our “Ben”
Jul 5th
I have to admit that I’m not really a Michael Jackson fanatic, but if I can name a favorite song performed by him, it would not be his famous “Thriller” or his “Billie Jean,” but my favorite Jackson song has to be the titular theme song of the 1972 horror film Ben. It is a song about friendship, a young boy’s ode to a killer rat to whom he befriended, and the song has its place in the family iPod At the end of the movie (pardon me for the spoilers) Ben survives the police’s seizure and killing of the rat colonies, but the story would have been different if the pet rat were either killed or sent to the labs.
A lot of fans have been over or have befriended Jackson, who died on June 25 this year. About 1.6 million fans have raffled for tickets to his funeral, slated to be after tomorrow, and the 11, 000 tickets will be handed out to the lucky ones, while those left behind can watch the memorial services on the big screens outside Staples Center. I for one cannot come to Los Angeles, given that I’m in college and I have visitors in my house, but I did something to honor the pop king – I wrote an article on the former Disney Parks attraction, Captain EO, in which I did not see since I was too young to have experienced it on my very first trip to Walt Disney World. On the day of his funeral, I would get my college work done early so I can have the liberty to watch the service from the PC, since my satellite television service is down and cannot be repaired until Thursday.
Jackson fans will always have a friend – like Ben – even when he had died.
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