KNEISEL HALL ♥ BLUE HILL Together in Music

We had so much fun yesterday that we forgot to blog about it! 

We started out back at the Consolidated School where we played for assembly  of about 80 middle school kids. Our theme for today was Folk Influence and we started out by playing the Danish fiddle tune Shine You No More which is an original composition by the Danish String Quartet but heavily influenced and very similar to historical Danish folk tunes. We discussed with the kids what comes to mind when we say the word “folk” and got some really wonderful and colorful answers which helped us narrow down our understanding of what folk music is to us: 1) music that is for everyone! 2) Tunes are most often passed down through aural tradition and not necessarily written down. 3) Music that is specific and reflective of a particular region or country.

With that in mind we moved our discussion to Dvorak’s  “American” Quartet. Before we played the exposition, we talked about some specific things in music that can give it a “folky” quality. We discussed the pentatonic scale, played it for them then had all the kids try singing it a few times. They did great! We also demonstrated how the opening theme is based on the very same intervallic relationship. We continued by discussing elements of ostinato, rhythm, contrasting moods and the ways all these ingredients create a “folky” sound. 

Of course we HAD to mention that the  Kneisel Quartet actually PREMIERED this piece in 1894!  We also discussed the circumstances in which the piece was written. Dvorak had taken a train from New York to Spillville, Iowa in 1893 for a much needed summer vacation from his post as the director of the National Conservatory in New York City. Dvorak’s music is heavily influenced and inspired by folk music, both from his homeland (Czech Republic, formerly the Austrian Empire) and his adopted country, the United States. About this quartet, he said: “I should never have written these works 'just so' if I hadn't seen America”. While there is no proven musical “quote” in the music, this piece is very much influenced by Dvorak’s interest in American folk music which he considered to be African American Spirituals, Native American music, Irish music and more. 

After performing the exposition for the students we went back and played both the first and second theme, and engaged the students in a discussion about how they were different. What was the mood of each? How was that mood achieved musically? The kids and teachers had some lovely ideas and observations! We closed the assembly with a performance of the whole work. 

After some lunch and naps we headed to the Parker Ridge Retirement Community! We played our whole concert program, stopping to explain some of the things we’d talked about in the schools along the way. It’s always a pleasure to play for this community and they were such a wonderful and appreciative audience as always!

Today was a busy day! 

We started off back at GSA with their special jazz combo class of seven kids, a mixed group of sophomore, junior, and senior students. We jumped right in with a fiddle tune by the Danish String Quartet called ‘Shine You No More,’ focusing on the variation in accompanimental figures over a repeating fiddle melody. We transitioned from this upbeat piece to the gorgeous, lyrical second movement of Haydn’s Op. 76, No. 3 ‘Emperor Quartet.’  This tied in quite nicely as the movement also features a consistent theme being passed around over various instrumental, harmonic, and rhythmic accompaniments. We gave some history on the origins of the theme and how it has evolved from Haydn’s melody to the German national anthem! The students had prepared the main theme from this movement in advance so we were able to bring them into our quartet, students playing the melody, the rest of the quartet playing Haydn’s own variations. We discussed the techniques utilized by Haydn, such as chromaticism, voicing, and instrumentation.

We then had a brief Q&A about the audition process and preparation since most of the students are preparing to audition for the All State band in a few weeks. We finished up the session with a performance of one of their required audition pieces for the band audition. 

We were enjoying our time with Steve and his students so much, we ended up staying a few minutes over for the next class that came in and played some of the Danish String Quartet tunes for them as well.

After a lunch break break we headed to the Bay School for an assembly of about 80 kids between the ages of 7-14. Here again, we played ‘Shine You No More’ and got specific with moods and textures with each iteration of the fiddle theme. The kids had all kinds of thoughts about why things sounded and felt different with each section we played. We moved into the Haydn after this and had the kids (and teachers) sing the main melody of the movement all together and then identify it as we played each variation. Again, we asked how things sounded or felt different. 

They kids were so engaged and excited to share! After a little Q&A, we were off to the library!

The library ended up being attended mostly by adults, so we had a small open rehearsal on the second movement of Dvorak’s ‘American’ quartet before performing the first movement, as well as Haydn and the Danish String Quartet tunes. 

We started our day with the 65 piece big band at George Stevens Academy! Since our theme this week is The Art of Borrowing, we decided that arranging would be a good topic for the band students.  We started by introducing the ideas of sampling and covering, which they were very familiar with from pop music.  We played a clip of Jay-Z’s song Hard Knock Life, which (you guessed it) begins with a sample from Annie! Then, we played Ariana Grande’s Seven Rings which is a cover (or arrangement) of My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music. We had a great time discussing the differences and similarities between the original and the newer versions.

And then to bring us all back into the classical world, we played a bunch of different arrangements of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony including the awesome disco version. 

Now that everyone was well versed in the idea of an arrangement, we began discussing Unst Boat Song, an ancient boat song from Unst (a Shetland island off the coast of Norway). This song is one of the few remaining examples of the old Shetland tongue, Norn, based on the ancient Scandinavian languages. The song was possibly used as an accompaniment to rowing. The lyrics indicate that the rowers would pray to the gods for good weather:

Strong winds blow from the west;

They may bring trouble and damage the boat, men.

Put in order, brace the mast

O what say you, the boat will be able to carry her sail?

I'm pleased with it, boys.

Holy father, watch over us

They may bring trouble and damage the boat.

We played various versions of the song and looked at how it transformed overtime.  All of this to lead up to our performance of a beautiful version arranged by the Danish String Quartet.

Then, we had the pleasure of listening to the group play a couple tunes for us! We were so impressed with their playing and even more impressed that most kids knew the original versions of the tunes. 

After we worked with the GSA kids, we took a trip to the gorgeous new coop and had some puppy time 

Later, we visited the 6th grade bad at Blue Hill Consolidated School and talked more about arrangements.  The kids had such interesting insight about the different versions of Unst Boat Song.  

We are so excited to be back for the Fall KHBH Residency. This session’s teaching artists are:

Katherine Liccardo, violin (‘13-14, ‘16)

Ravenna Lipchik, violin (‘12-’14)

Matt Consul, viola (‘12, ‘14-’16)

Julia Biber, cello (‘01-’05)

Can you tell that we all love Kneisel? Our theme for this week is: The Art of Borrowing. We’ll be exploring how composers borrow material or are influenced by certain styles (folk music, songs, etc). We’ll be looking at how they transform the material to create a piece, using techniques such as variation and texture.

Today, we hung up flyers in town, did some planning, and rehearsed! Also, Julia pretended to be Ellen:

This always happens, but we honestly can’t believe that it’s our last day in Blue Hill. We made sure to make stops at Bucklyn Coffee, the Blue Hill Wine Shop, the Blue Hill Coop, Bay View Bakery, the Fish Net, and all of our favorite places in town throughout the day.  In the morning we returned to GSA for another visit to Jam Bake. Clara and Hannah performed a movement of the Ravel duo and Sam and Tom challenged the students to try to take inspiration from Ravel and look for ways to create interesting ways of making the music flow and transition in their own arrangements.  Tom and Sam re-ordered the solos in Jam Bake’s version of “Rondo à la Turk” so that the feel could be more spontaneous, but also issued a challenge for each soloist to think about a bigger structure.

We really got into some serious music making with Jam Bake, as we considered questions of the same ilk as those posed by traditional chamber music, such as:

- What are the ways we can take this music off the page and really make it alive?How can the energy from one solo be passed to another to make a larger shape throughout the solo section?

- How can soloists choose the more unexpected notes of a scale more often, to prolong suspense and play with the audience’s expectations?

- What are the ways we can take this music off the page and really make it alive?

- How can the students who are backing up the solo (in this case drums, keys, and bass) influence or respond more quickly, and more specifically, to what the soloist is doing by changing up the rhythmic feel of the accompaniment?

The Jam Bake players were game for anything and had a lot of fun trying out new solos, transitions, and on-the-spot challenges. Thanks Mr. O for your tireless work as an educator, and for being a great host to KHBH once again!

Today we finally had a spot of time to hike up Blue Hill and have a picnic lunch at the summit, and we were thankful for the excellent weather.  We attempted to take some album cover/band photos with limited success and enjoyed reflecting on the week’s experiences as we walked.

The day concluded with our annual Spring Concert at Kneisel Hall.  It was extraordinarily meaningful to play Ravel, and Tom and Sam’s arrangements of Couperin, Takemitsu, Scriabin, Liszt, and others for a large audience of people from all over the community, from longtime friends of Kneisel Hall, to folks we met during the week at Jam Bake and the “History of Music in Blue Hill” event. Hannah and Clara were reflecting that-with a few years off here and there-one or both of them has performed every year in Blue Hill for the last fourteen years. It’s become our home audience away from home, and we are ever so grateful to be a part of such a unique and vital community. We love challenging ourselves to bring fresh, dynamic programs each time we play here, and hope to continue doing so far into the future. Thanks for coming out for us, Blue Hill! Till September!

Thursday morning started bright and early with an 8am visit to Jam Bake, the honors high school jazz combo at George Stevens Academy. On this, the first of two visits with them, we got to know each other personally and musically by sharing some recent repertoire. What an AMAZING start to the day to hear this excellent 8-piece band play Rondo à la Turk (Dave Brubeck), Come and Be a Winner (Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings), Guataca City (Paquito d’Rivera), and Watermelon Man (Herbie Hancock).  Everyone took solos and showed off impressive improvisational and ensemble skills!  

In the next class, we met with the full concert band and got things started with an improv game where we composed chains of melodies by having each person in the room add a note, one by one.  Next, we shared the second movement of Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello -- it’s easy to hear inspirations from jazz, including a full  walking bass line in this one!  Thanks to the handiwork of Tom Bergeron, our trumpet player and expert arranger, we embarked on a fun activity to expand the orchestration to include all 60 or so members of the band!  We used different sections of the band to reinforce key moments of the movement such as the introductory ostinato, a pointillistic transition point, and the very bluesy walking bassline in the middle section.  We are quite sure that Ravel, a master of orchestration himself, would have loved it!

In the afternoon we made our third stop at Blue Hill Consolidated School to perform for eighth grade band and music classes.  We shared music by Takemitsu, Ravel, and Richard Rodgers and had a great Q & A session with the students.

Our last stop of the day was at Parker Ridge Retirement Community, always a favorite place to visit and share music.  We played in the living room for about an hour, trying out Sam’s new arrangements of music by Baroque composer Francois Couperin along with Tom’s arrangements of music by Liszt and Takemitsu, a few standards, and the Ravel duo.  We loved that when we played the piece by Takemitsu, entitled Romance, one of the eighth graders at BHCS reported that the musical landscape made her think of Luke Skywalker on the arid Sand Planet from Star Wars, while the residents of Parker Ridge reported that it made them think of a lazy afternoon in the forest or by the ocean.  It was inspiring to hear such a wide range of images!

After a long day of music-making we ended the evening at Barncastle enjoying delicious pizzas and salads!

We hit the ground running today (Wednesday) with stops at Bucklyn Coffee and the Blue Hill Coop to fuel up for a morning of arranging and rehearsing. The afternoon brought the first of three visits to Bill Schubeck’s band program at the Blue Hill Consolidated School. This is our 5th year working with Bill, and we are always super impressed by his patience and skill in teaching so many different instruments and levels, from beginners to advanced students. The eighth grade band is getting ready for their final concert of the year, so we sat in to give some last minute pointers on Hymn to the Fallen and other pieces.  

Later that day we continued our series of children’s concerts at the Blue Hill Public Library with “Kind of Bleu - Inspired by Jazz,” a journey from America to France and back again with an exploration of Ravel’s music and how it was inspired by jazz.  Our conversation naturally pointed towards the intersection between notation and improvised music: can audience members tell when musicians start playing off the page? We practiced improvising with children and parents in the audience by singing Row, Row Your Boat in many different ways, picking one element of the music to be free with each time.  In one version, everyone sang the words in any order they wanted to (Row! Row! Row! Row! Merrily, Boat!, etc.), in another, we changed the notes to any notes we wanted.  We created a quite a cacophony by all improvising simultaneously!

In the evening we were proud to host at Kneisel Hall an event celebrating the history of music in Blue Hill, organized by Hannah Cyrus and the Jonathan Fischer House in collaboration with Bagaduce Music, The Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Hancock County, Kneisel Hall, and several other individual contributors. Sam and Clara played part of a Mozart sonata to commemorate the first piano’s arrival in Blue Hill (by boat!) in the 19th century.  Clara and Hannah also shared some music by Ravel to tribute Franz Kneisel, who gave the NY premiere of the Ravel String Quartet in 1905.  Kneisel Hall executive director Ellen Werner read remarks prepared by board member and historian Betsey Harries. It was very meaningful to contribute to this celebration of the rich cultural and musical history of the region, and it was great to see so many new faces in the hall!

KHBH-Together in Music is STOKED to be back in Blue Hill for a week-long residency, where we are discovering the many connections between Classical chamber music and jazz. Directors Hannah Collins and Clara Lyon can’t believe their good luck in being joined by fantastic and multi-faceted musicians Thomas Bergeron (trumpet-Atlantic Brass Quintet and Springfield Symphony, and Director of Chamber Music at Deerfield Academy), and Samuel Adams (pianist, bassist, and composer: recently the composer-in-residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra).

We arrived in Blue Hill late last night, just in time to see a million stars come out. The heavy, vibrant stillness of the forest was just what we needed to ease our travel-weary selves. Our morning began with a visit to the fantastic Bucklyn Coffee (house-made roasts! great conversation!), followed by terrific breakfast sandwiches at our office-away from campus, the Blue Hill Co-Op.

Cross pollination and inspiration between classical and jazz composition is a long-standing tradition, and we had a blast in our morning rehearsal, examining the well documented territory of Ravel’s fascination with the blues via the Violin and Cello Duo and the Violin Sonata, as well as tackling for the first time some jazz-influenced arrangements of Couperin (Adams), Scriabin (Bergeron) and Takemitsu (Bergeron). 

We enjoyed a visit to the 8th Grade Band at Blue Hill Consolidated School in the afternoon, where our cherished collaborator Mr. Bill Schubeck is prepping the students for their year-end concert next week. The students are making good headway with “Hymn to the Fallen,” from the movie Saving Private Ryan, and it was a fun treat to hear Thomas’s story of how this piece inspired him to get serious about the trumpet as a young student.

Rehearsals ran far into the night, with lobster rolls from the Fishnet, an afternoon espresso at the outstanding Blue Hill Wine Shop  (office-away-from campus with all the excellent wine, cheese, bread, coffee, and friends with excellent musical tastes that you’ll ever need if you sail to Greenland from here*) haddock chowder at Marlintini’s, rounded out a great start to the week.

Stay tuned to our activities and silly antics to see where we’ll be tomorrow. And don’t forget to come to our shows: we can’t wait to play music for you!

Tuesday May 29, 4pm at Blue Hill Public Library: Interactive Childrens Concert  

Tuesday May 29, 7pm at Kneisel Hall: The Music History of Blue Hill

*this event is co-sponsored by the Jonathan Fisher House, the Blue Hill Historical Society, Bagaduce Music, the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and Kneisel Hall

Thursday May 30, 4pm at Parker Ridge

Friday May 31, 7pm main stage performance at Kneisel Hall

What a rewarding last day in Blue Hill!!

We started out at the George Stevens Academy, where we met with Steve “Mr. O” Orlofsky and his 8-person high school jazz combo We prepared another class on interpretation for them, and our emoji-cards were again put to good use :). After we played for them and went through our materials, they performed for us too, and man did they sound good! 

The class after them produced some more sound - 50 buoyant high school kids with instrument in hand, ready to play and learn. After talking about different ways to bring music to life, we made a graphic score together on the white board and had different groups of kids play it - with naturally different interpretations. It was very fun for them as well as us!

During our break, we fueled up with some lovely coffee and pastries from Bucklyn! Then, on to the Bay School, where we worked with a wonderfully attentive audience.

We decided to change things up a bit in our last session: the kids helped us come up with a story that narrates the piece we play. With Czinka Panna’s “Notaja” (”melody”), we had volunteers come up with a part of the story in different sections. And you can not imagine what we ended up with - the wild adventure of a young girl falling out of trees, sneaking into a house to steal cookies, only to be caught by police, her parents arguing with the cops to try to get her out of her tricky situation, eating cookies back at home, and finally, falling out of another tree at the end of the story...

Our day was ended by a pop-up concert at the Fishnet. We wanted to make sure that local passers-by would be able to enjoy our music too and see what we have been doing in the community this week. Though a little chilly, it was wonderful - who knew Bartok would pair so well with lobster, fries and corn?!

All in all, it was a wonderful and gratifying week, not in the least thanks to the fantastic music teachers we worked with. Steve Orlofsky, Audrey Means and Bill Schubeck do so much incredible work with so many kids, making a significant difference in the lives of so many. We are grateful to have gotten the opportunity to work with their students, and to get a taste of what an inspiration it is to have them in our lives. Thank you, teachers, for the work you do every day!

What an action-packed day of inspiration! We started the morning visiting the 2nd and 3rd grade classes of Ms. Means back at BHCS. It was nice to get to meet the students again to talk about the communicative aspects of music: how varied our interpretations can be and how we can bring music to life.

We discovered different emotions again through Bartok and emoji cards.... but this time, we asked the kids to create titles and stories to the pieces. There were beautifully poetic titles, like “the dark elder” and “silent light”, and more descriptive narratives like bunnies hopping in the woods, dualing snakes, jungle adventures, and cops and robbers. We talked about what aspects of the music and our performance made them think of their titles and emojis, like tempo, dynamics, and articulation.

With these factors in mind, we talked about graphic scores and how we would choose to play different shapes and colors. The students became composers as we made a class composition!

We had two contrasting and thoughtful performances from students and our quartet played a version too.

In the afternoon, we visited Mr. Schubeck’s 7th grade band class and also discovered a range of descriptions in interpretations of Bartok: from personal accounts of playing hide-and-seek with siblings to pirates at sea. These titles influenced us to play the pieces differently the second time, as we listened together for which parts we were hiding, when we were being found, and having a more reckless pirate swagger.

We discussed how when we change the way we play something, it can convey a completely different meaning. We played “Mary had a little lamb” together and students varied their volume, articulation, and length of notes for happy, angry, and sad versions. We also showed how the tempo can change the mood of the piece completely from mysterious to light-hearted dancing in Bartok’s “Pe Loc”, from the Romanian Dances. At the end of class, the band performed Holst’s “Jupiter”, from the Planets for us. They were so well-prepared and sounded great; they had clearly made many interpretive choices to convey a noble Jupiter!

During our break, we sipped on Black Dinah’s hot chocolate and hiked up Blue Hill. We were already embodying the imagery from the morning classes as Karen and Ana turned into hiding woodland creatures.

We got off to a great start this morning with an assembly at Blue Hill Consolidated School. Through performances of Bartók’s Children’s Pieces and Romanian Folk Dances, we discussed the roles of the four instruments of the quartet. We helped the kids to listen in new ways: students closely followed different members of the quartet and deconstructed the music to hear what each individual person was playing. Volunteers from the audience made requests: “Can I hear that section again with only the first violin and the cello?” 

This afternoon, we had a blast working with a group of very creative kids at the Blue Hill Library! 

We explored the idea that two people can interpret the same music in different ways. We don’t all see or hear things in the same way, and that is a beautiful thing. Remember the famous “blue and black vs. white and gold dress” debacle? 

The kids responded to Bartók’s Children’s Pieces using a selection of emoji...

...and they discovered that they didn’t always choose the same faces as their parent or neighbor! Some kids even held up two or three different emoji for one piece, telling us that just one face couldn’t sum up all of the emotions that Bartók made them feel.

Our audience also transformed into composers! They worked in small groups to create graphic scores, a form of musical notation using shapes and pictures instead of notes and rhythms. 

The groups swapped scores and worked together on interpreting shapes, colors and dynamics into sound. They performed each other’s scores using percussion instruments and found instruments. We discovered that the red buzzer from the game Taboo makes exactly the right sound for a giant orange circle!

Hello again! We are thrilled to be back in Blue Hill for another Together in Music residency!  This week’s theme, “Interpretation: Bringing Music to Life” explores the different aspects of interpreting music.  How does a musician interpret a written score and bring it to life? How does the listener interpret the music that they hear? And how does a composer interpret sources of inspiration and turn them into a piece of music? This week we will be presenting works by Haydn, Bartok, Beethoven, and Hungarian, female composer Czinka Panna. 

Our resident teaching artists this week are:

Katherine Liccardo, violin (KH ‘13-14, ‘16)

Karen Dekker, violin (KH ‘12)

Rose Hashimoto, viola (KH ‘05-’07)

Ana Kim, cello (special guest!)  

Today, we had the pleasure of playing for the wonderful residents of Parker Ridge.  They are always so welcoming and appreciative (and clearly know how much we love cookies!). 

The wild, rhapsodic qualities of Bartok and Czinka, the tragedy of Beethoven, and the humor of Haydn made for a contrasting and exciting program. 

It was the perfect way to start our week of music making in Blue Hill! We have a a busy week ahead of us and are so grateful to be welcomed back into this incredible community. 

Whew! After another busy and inspiring week, we wrapped things up on Friday evening with a concert back at Kneisel Hall. Our program included Schumann's Adagio and Allegro, selections from Mozart's Piano Quartet in E-flat and Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello, and the complete Fauré Piano Quartet which we had been teasing snippets of throughout the week. We were also pleased to perform a special preview of the program the prior afternoon at Parker Ridge. We saw many familiar, friendly faces there and it was great to catch up.

The Fauré is an emotional piece, full of lush textures, dramatic character shifts, and no shortage of lovely melodies. So it felt especially appropriate to play it in Blue Hill, a town where all of us have had formative experiences and to which we still feel a strong emotional attachment. It means so much to be welcomed back into this community and have the opportunity to build new artistic bonds as the years go on. Playing this heartfelt piece for an audience of students, teachers, alumni, community members, family, and friends felt like a fitting conclusion to a wonderful week.

There's an old quip, commonly attributed to Brian Eno, that while the Velvet Underground's debut album only sold a few thousand copies, everyone who bought it wound up starting a band. With any luck, the same will be true of the Consolidated School students who attended our Friday morning assembly, "So You Want to Start a Band." In it we demonstrated how musicians can come together, use a variety of instruments to assume different roles, communicate with one another, and make musical decisions that enliven the piece.

After introducing ourselves and our instruments, we deconstructed the Scherzo of Fauré's C minor Piano Quartet to show the various roles we can play. At the opening, Hannah supplied the bass line, Clara and Jenn the harmony, and Solon the melody. And we showed the students how those roles be swapped and passed around as the piece progresses.

With those roles established, we discussed a few musical choices we can make: tempo, dynamics, and balance. To get the audience in on the action, we took volunteers and supplied them with giant, colorful, magical batons—also known as Boomwhackers®—which they could use to control each of these variables as we played. As each volunteer raised or lowered their baton, we played faster, or slower, or louder, or softer, or we changed which instrument emerged from the texture. The students relished this responsibility and even cheered each other on as they stepped up to conduct us.

The kids were having so much fun that it seemed only fair to reverse roles, and a few good-natured groans could be heard as Solon took over the Boomwhacker and brandished it at our audience. While the students sang "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt," it was our turn to control their dynamics and tempo. They paid close attention to their conductor and it was clear that they were already well-practiced in dynamics from their BHCS music classes.

After one more quartet performance, we entertained questions from the audience and were impressed at the specificity and quality of the ones we received. They were especially interested to know more about the horse hair which is used in bows: what makes it an effective material, how many hairs are used in a single bow, how it varies between instruments, and how often the hairs break and need to be replaced. We were thankful for such an attentive and curious audience and can't wait to return.

On Thursday morning, we explored another pairing of art forms, leading a GSA seminar called "Paint the Music." Clara and Hannah set up shop in the GSA art room, while Jenn dusted off her paintbrushes and became art instructor for the day. The duo started with a beautiful rendition of Josefin's Waltz as the students listened and painted. The waltz is a sunny, open piece with a lilting simplicity, so it was no surprise that several students ended up with brushy paintings of blues and white wisps. After that, they switched to the first movement of the Ravel duo, which has a brighter tempo and more rhythmic variation. Students' canvasses started morphing to brighter colors, like oranges and yellows. 

After the Ravel, we paused to talk a bit about some words that can describe both sonic and visual art, including color, shading, line, and motion. Once we discussed the terms, the duo played the Ravel again—and the artists began incorporating elements of the discussion into their art. As students listened for different textures in the music, they started translating them into their paintings. The result was a wide range of styles, ranging from representational images of butterflies and children to abstract bursts of orange and red to Mondrian-esque squares of color separated by thick lines.

One student who had no artistic background spent the first 20 minutes painting a small black dot on the corner of the page. After listening to the music, and a few quiet words of encouragement, he started opening up. At the end of the class, Clara and Hannah decided to “play” a few paintings, and chose his work. The duo played a poignant rendition of his painting, a bright airplane flying low over a dark cloud, which had been inspired by their music.

After such an energetic start to our day, it felt fitting to wind down in the evening with a musical pajama party. Back at the Blue Hill Library, we were joined by enthusiastic kids in snazzy sleepwear, who quickly made themselves at home among floor pillows and stuffed animals. Our goal? To write our own take on the iconic bedtime story “Goodnight Moon” and find just the right soothing music to match.

We kicked things off with the finale of Fauré’s C minor Piano Quartet and asked our audience to listen closely and think of an animal it reminded them of. Their responses didn't sound very sleepy at all: a bird flying fast, a playful puppy, an energetic tiger. So we knew we had to keep looking for the right music. But this gave us a chance to talk about what made the music so peppy, like the tempo, dynamics, and rhythm.

We tried out more musical selections, each a bit sleepier than the last, and collected more suggestions for what the music brought to mind in our audience, like fairy tales and objects in their homes. Eventually we hit on just the right piece, a selection for viola and piano from Schumann's Märchenbilder. Jenn and Solon performed this lullaby while Clara and Hannah read "Goodnight Blue Hill," our new story hot off the presses. As our audience settled deeper into their pillows, they might have noticed that the story had a familiar cast of characters: all of the evening's suggestions, from a playful puppy to a gingerbread house to a big comfy chair.