Very Young People’s Concerts Knoxville: January 28, 2016 Maryville: January 29, 2016

Let’s Tell A Story TEACHER’S GUIDE

Music Can Make Your Life Complete Lucas Richman

The Birthday Present Lucas Richman

Overture to The Marriage of Figaro Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Playground Escapades Lucas Richman

Blow the Man Down Traditional / arr. Lucas Richman

Flight of the Bumblebee Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Peter and the Wolf Sergei Prokofiev

Hi! I’m Picardy Penguin. Follow me through this guide for interesting musical facts and history. First, we will learn about the conductor.

A conductor is a person who leads the orchestra. You can learn more about conductors on the next page of this guide!

Look for this symbol throughout the guide for specific things to listen for at the concert.

And this symbol means you should sing along with us at the concert!

Table of Contents Meet the Conductor ............................................................... 2 Notes on Pieces and Composers ........................................ 3-8 Anatomy of a Symphony Orchestra ...................................... 9 Meet the Performers and Musicians ............................... 10-11 Activities and Lessons ..................................................... 12-14 Concert Program ............................................................. 15-16 Audience Job Description / Acknowledgements ................. 17

Please note that this publication may be copied and used for educational purposes only. You are encouraged to copy the concert program on pages 15-16 for use with your students in the classroom.

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The conductor of an orchestra is the leader. Conductors must know a great deal about music, the great composers, and their works. They must also have the skills and personality to direct many players at once and to help the players work together as a team. Conductors understand how each instrument works and the special qualities of each instrument. Most importantly, they learn each piece of music well enough to guide all the players in exciting performances!

Steven Karidoyanes grew up in Boston, where his Greek parents taught him and his sisters and brother to love music, friends and family. He was also taught the importance of hard work and dedication. His father owned a sandwich shop where young Steven worked as a teenager, and it was there that he learned to “treat [people] so well that they have to come back and bring family and friends…” From that idea developed Mr. Karidoyanes’ philosophy of concern for audiences and other musicians with whom he performs.

Maestro Karidoyanes has conducted the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra for more than twenty years. He is also Music Director of the New England Conservatory Youth Symphony, leading concerts not only in Boston but in tours of Italy, Greece, Costa Rica, Eastern Europe and Ireland. There’s more: Mr. Karidoyanes conducts Masterworks Chorale, which performs at Harvard University, and is a regular understudy conductor for The Boston Pops. In addition to all those conducting jobs, he also finds time to teach future conductors and compose his own music. And, he works as a classical music announcer/producer, having worked for NPR radio stations in Boston, North Carolina and Indiana.

For his performance as guest conductor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, let’s give Maestro Karidoyanes a big welcome to Tennessee!

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Meet the Conductor

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Music Can Make Your Life Complete Lucas Richman (1964-Present)

“Music Can Make Your Life Complete” is the theme song for the KSO’s Very Young People’s Concerts. The composer is Lucas Richman.

Join our guest performer to sing the refrain of this piece.

Often conductors hold a baton, a stick that they use to mark the beats of the music for the orchestra to follow. Do you see the baton that Maestra Jo-ann Falletta is using? Conductors are addressed by the title Maestro, for men, or Maestra, for women. This Italian word means “teacher.”

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The Birthday Present Lucas Richman (1964-Present)

This song tells the story of someone who has to find a gift for a friend’s birthday.

What does the composer do to make the music sound like the person is worried? (He writes it in a minor key.) How does the singer make the sound more dramatic? (She sings it an octave higher.) The composer adds a fast jazz rhythm for string bass, drums and brass, to make the music sound more nervous. The strings and a solo oboe help us hear how the person is thinking of an answer to her problem. Finally, the music ends like the story does—happy and triumphant!

The Birthday Present I was going to a birthday party But I didn’t have a present for my friend. I was running late and becoming nervous That I just might not arrive until the end. Oh, what should I do? What should I do? What should I do? If I arrived with no gift then my friend might be sad, But being late to the fun also would be bad. That would be so very, very, very, very, very, very, very bad. So, what did I do? What did I do? What did I do? Well, I wrote my friend a birthday song As I made my way to the party throng,

And I sang my birthday gift on time!

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Overture to The Marriage of Figaro Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Born in Salzburg, Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who, at age three, began to play the harpsichord by watching his older sister’s lessons. By the time he was five he could play both harpsichord and violin quite well, and he began to write his first music. His father and teacher, Leopold, helped him write down his pieces until he learned how to do it himself. Leopold took his two children on concert tours throughout Europe from the time that Wolfgang was six years old. Wolfgang continued to amaze his family and those who met him, not only by playing music that his father taught him—he could hear a new piece once or twice and then play it perfectly (or write it down) by memory!

Today, Mozart is one of the best-known and most popular composers from the Classical period of music. He wrote an astonishingly large amount of music, including works for piano, for small groups of instruments and for orchestra. He also wrote operas (his first at age eleven), and you will hear the introduction to one of these at the KSO concert. Sadly, this musical genius became ill and died when he was only 35 years old.

Q. What is an opera? A. An opera is a kind of performance in which actors sing

all or most of the words of a play with music performed by an orchestra.

Q. What is an overture? A. An overture is a piece of music played at the beginning

of a play, musical or opera. Often you will hear in an overture short sections of music from the large work that will follow, but that is not the case with Mozart’s overture to his opera The Marriage of Figaro.

The Marriage of Figaro, for which Mozart wrote the music, is a comic opera and one of the most widely performed operas in the world. It tells the story of Figaro, a servant in a palace in Spain, and his upcoming marriage to Susanna. Before the wedding, there is much silliness among all the characters as they try to sort out love’s mysteries.

Listen as the orchestra sets the mood of the opera. Can you hear people running around acting silly?

Playground Escapades Lucas Richman (1964-Present)

Blow the Man Down Traditional / Arr. Lucas Richman (1964-Present)

Lucas Richman wrote Playground Escapades to tell the story of activities that can happen during recess at school. Listen to the notes move up and down in small steps, or in big jumps (intervals), and how the speed of

the music (tempo) gets faster or slower, to tell the story.

Blow the Man Down is the type of song known as a sea shanty—a work song once sung by sailors or pirates. Sea shanties were used to pass the time and to help a team of workers move together in a smooth rhythm, before modern machines and steam engines replaced the hard labor of hoisting huge sails or rowing, as well as other tasks. The verses of these work songs would change from one time to the next, according to the story being made up as the singers worked; but the tune and chorus remained the same.

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Can you hear…

…string instruments jumping rope or playing tetherball?

…bassoons and string basses playing hopscotch?

…races being run by flutes, French horns and snare drum?

…the brass section misbehaving like a big bully and starting a fight?

…the teacher, played by the English horn?

Flight of the Bumblebee Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)

Many people who have never heard of Rimsky-Korsakov still recognize a short excerpt from one of his operas. The excerpt is known as Flight of the Bumblebee, and the opera is The Tale of Tsar Saltan. The story is based on a Russian fairy tale.

Once upon a time…

There was a young prince whose cruel aunts cast him into the sea (they were jealous of their younger sister, his mother the queen). The prince grew up on the island where he washed ashore. One day he rescued a magic swan, who showed her thanks by making him the ruler of the island. When he told her that he wanted to return to his home, she turned him into a bumblebee so he could visit without being recognized. At his father’s palace, he stung both aunts and his cruel grandmother! Back at his island realm, he learned that the magic swan was actually a beautiful princess, so of course he married her!

…and they lived happily ever after.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer born into an aristocratic family with a long line of military and naval service. An older brother was a very high-ranking officer in the Imperial Russian Navy who helped young Nikolai establish a naval career at a very young age. Nikolai loved the ocean, and to travel to faraway lands to learn new things; but the best part about his various jobs in the navy was a good salary that allowed him to follow his real passion, music.

He had begun piano lessons at age six, but later wrote about himself that he played “badly, carelessly…” While getting his naval education, he became friends with a group of Russian composers and realized he loved writing music more than playing it. He became especially well-known for his skills at orchestration (choosing which instruments would sound best to tell a story or mimic a character like a bumblebee). Rimsky-Korsakov and his musical colleagues became known as the Russian Five, best known for a nationalistic style of writing that included many Russian folk tunes.

Do you hear the bumblebee buzzing around? And his stings? 7

Peter and the Wolf Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

The Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev was born in a small village in Ukraine. As a young child he showed musical talent and his

mother taught him to play the piano. He began to write music when he was five and later his mother moved with him to Saint Petersburg so he could get a good music education there. After Sergei’s graduation from school he traveled around Europe to learn more. World War I and the Russian Revolution made it hard to live and work in Russia, so Prokofiev moved to other places, including the United States, southern Germany and Paris. But he missed his homeland and eventually returned to Russia. Prokofiev had special skill in using music to tell a story. One of his most famous musical stories is the one on our concert, Peter and the Wolf. It was written for a children’s theater in Russia, but has since been performed all over the world. Prokofiev also wrote symphonies, ballets, operas and music for films.

—adapted from classicsforkids.com

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Perhaps one of the most beloved musical tales for children, Peter and the Wolf was commissioned by a children’s theater in Moscow. The goal was to “cultivate musical tastes in children…” The work’s composer, Sergi Prokofiev, recalled after the premiere that it did not attract much attention and that attendance was very poor. In the years since that inauspicious start in 1936, much attention indeed has been bestowed on Peter and the Wolf. It has been presented by the world’s top ballet and theater companies, recorded by many orchestras with celebrity narrators, and made into several different film versions. Prokofiev himself visited Walt Disney at the Disney Studio and inspired the Disney animated film (1946).

Listen to the instruments of the orchestra as they play the parts of all the characters in the story of Peter and the Wolf. Why do you think the composer chose the instruments he did for each of the characters? Can you re-tell the story that the orchestra performs?

A tuba weighs about 25 lbs.

Oboe players make their ownreeds, whittling them frommoistened strips of cane.

Violin strings were originally made ofcatgut, but now are made of metal.

A xylophone is made of wood.If it’s metal, it’s a Glockenspiel.SYMPHONY

of aAnatomy

First Violins

Second ViolinsPiano

Harp

Percussion

Timpani

Piccolo

Flutes

Clarinets

Oboes

Bassoons

Trumpets

Trombones

Tuba

French Horns

Basses

Violas

Cellos

Q. What’s the range of a violin?

A. About twenty yards, if you havea good arm.

Q. What’s the difference between anoboe and a bassoon?

A. You can hit a baseball farther witha bassoon.

Q. What’s the difference between a jetairplane and a trumpet?

A. About three decibels.

Q. What’s the difference betweena bass and a cello?

A. The bass burns longer.

It takes 84 musicians – almost more than you can shake a baton at –to produce the KSO’s great sound. You’ll often see more or fewerpeople on stage at a given performance, depending onwhat instruments the piece calls for.

Just like athletes, musicians wear uniforms and “play”for a living – and it can be hard to tell who’s whowithout a scorecard. Here’s a quick guide toyour KSO, along with some classic jokesfrom the musicians.

Lucas Richman, Music Director and Conductorof the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra

There are more violins in the orchestrathan any other single instrument. Theviolins play in two different groups,with the first violins playing the highest-pitched part and the second violinsplaying the second-highest.

The largest double bass that everexisted was almost 16 feet talland was built to celebrate theCincinnati Music Festival in 1889.

In the 1600s, some conductors kept the beat bybanging a large wooden staff against the ground.Now, conductors use a light, wooden baton.

Design and text by

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Soprano Melisa Barrick Baldwin lives in South Knoxville with her family. They all love music so much that everyone plays an instrument: Mr. Baldwin and Jack (age 15) play cello, while Ella (age 11) and Poppy (age 6) play violin. Ms. Baldwin plays piano, but loves to sing even more! She grew up in Indiana but went to school in Maryland, where she learned to sing opera, musical the-ater and early music from the Renaissance period. Every

summer she travels with her family to music festivals where she gets to perform in chamber music recitals, which means she sings with a small group of instrumentalists. Many of the works she performs were written by composers who are still living, and whose music is called "New Music" within the classical music tradition. But her very favorite way to sing is with an orchestra, which is one of the reasons she's so excited to be a part of the KSO's Very Young People's Concerts! Ms. Baldwin practices daily in a room with a big piano and lots of plants, and is kept company by her family's three dogs: one very large, one very small, and one who is of medium size. They all like to sing along.

Lisa Hall McKee is the artistic director of GO! Contemporary Dance Works, a contemporary ballet and modern dance ensemble. Lisa studied classical ballet, jazz and modern dance while performing with the New Repertory Dance Company. She has toured the southeastern United States, performing concerts and giving lecture demonstrations at universities, theatres and schools. Lisa performed with the Oak Ridge

Civic Ballet for four years, dancing the lead character role in Coppelia, the Snow Queen and the Spanish dancer in The Nutcracker, and was principal dancer for the ballet Cinderella. Since opening her school in 1991, Lisa has had numerous students accepted to prestigious dance programs in the United States. Lisa is a recipient of the Outstanding Teacher Award given by the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts.

Meet the Performers and Musicians

Today’s Symphony Orchestra varies in size from city to city, but usually has about 100 players. Orchestras are different from bands because they include strings instruments. The string section is the biggest section, with about 60 people. The woodwind section is made up of twelve or more players, and the brass section usually has about ten. Finally, the number of percussion players changes a great deal, depending on the amount of percussion parts used in different pieces. The Anatomy of a Symphony Orchestra sheet on page 9 of this guide shows how you will see the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra seated on stage when you come to the concert. The players sit in a semicircle facing the conductor, with the strings in front. The woodwinds are usually behind the strings, and behind them are the brass. Percussion players normally sit at the back of the orchestra, on the right and left corners of the semicircle.

Now let’s meet some members of our very own KSO!

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Meet the Performers and Musicians

Gary Sperl has played clarinet with the KSO for nearly 40 years. He has also played all over the world—as a soloist, with jazz ensembles and with other orchestras. Gary is retired from teaching at The University of Tennessee, but he still enjoys helping young people learn to play the clarinet. Each summer he goes to Africa to teach, and to work for the conservation of the mpingo trees that grow in

Tanzania. The hard, black wood from mpingo trees is used to make clarinets for professional clarinet players like Gary. When he is not making music, you might find Gary running marathons or enjoying his Maine Coon cats. How fitting that in this concert he gets to play a cat!

Although French horn player Jeffery Whaley will play the part of the wolf in our musical sto-ry, he is actually a very nice guy! When he is not buzzing his lips into a conch shell or a shofar (sheep’s horn) to show the origins of brass instruments, he might be playing his homemade French horn, constructed of plastic tubing and an oil funnel (enhanced by his own mouthpiece for easy buzzing). Like the other musicians featured on this page, Jeffery has traveled throughout the United States to study, perform and teach. He has achieved recognition as a finalist and winner of several horn competitions sponsored by the International

Horn Society. One thing that’s different about Jeffery, though, is that he is from Tennessee, having grown up in Sevierville!

Claire Chenette grew up in Iowa, lived in Los Angeles, and moved to Knoxville last year to play oboe with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.

After many years of hard study and practice aimed at making her instrument sing rather than quack, during our concert she will get to revel in her inherent quackiness as the duck in "Peter and the Wolf." Claire can often be spotted riding around Knoxville on her bike since that helps our planet and makes it easier for her to find parking. In her free time, Claire likes to hike in the mountains and play folk music. You might even catch her playing the oboe barefoot in the woods!

One of the newest members of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra is Aaron Apaza. As you can see he plays bassoon, and in our concert you will hear him as Peter’s grandfather. Aaron grew up in South Dakota but he has lived in several cities in the United States while studying or performing as a professional musician. Before coming to

Knoxville he was a member of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the New World Symphony in Miami and the Colorado Symphony. He has also performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Baltimore Symphony.

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Activities and Lessons

Musical Stories

Play the excerpts from the CD that was sent with this Teacher’s Guide. Then, help your students Create,

Perform or Respond according to grade level and to which excerpts are played.

Guided listening ideas can be found on pages 4-8, and here are more suggestions—you’ll come up with

your own, too!

How did the music make you feel? (happy, sad, nervous, victorious, excited…)

What did it make you want to do? (relax, march, jump, run, creep, dance…) [Play it again and allow them to move to the music. Or, they can clap rhythms or play instruments with the music.]

Were there words to the music? Did you hear a story? [Have your students re-tell the story, act it out, create sound effects, or improvise rhythms and/or melodies to tell the story…or they can make up their own story.]

What instruments did you hear? How did the compos-er use them to help tell a story?

Which compositional elements help tell a story? (major/minor keys, intervals, tempo, orchestration…)

Which music do you like best? Why?

Draw Your Own Comic Strip

The Marriage of Figaro tells a silly story in which there are many surprises and the characters play tricks on one another. At the end of the story, there is a happy ending.

Play the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro.

Have students create comic strip panels while listening to the different sections of the overture.

When there is a change in the music, students should change the story panel.

Comic strip story panels include drawings, movement marks, sound effects (Pow!), etc.

Student’ panels may be continuous or they may create individual story panels for each section of the music.

—adapted from Dynamic Surprises lesson plan

from Carnegie Hall

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Don’t forget to teach the song “Music Can Make Your Life Complete” to your students so they can sing it with the orchestra at the concert!

Activities and Lessons

Characters from Peter and the Wolf

Match each character to the instrument that plays its sound in Sergei Prokofiev’s musical story. Can you name each instrument?

Check out these Peter and the Wolf lesson plans (http://www.classicsforkids.com/teachers/lessonplans_prokofiev.asp) from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony’s Keeping Score lesson plans (http://www.keepingscore.org/education/lessonplanlibrary (Venn Diagram for Peter and theWolf and Visualizing Visualizing))

On the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Website

1. A full page version of the matching activity to the left

2. The story of Peter and the Wolf, as it will be read by Picardy Penguin at the concert. You may choose instead to read it from a library book, or even play a recording. But be sure to familiarize your students with the story before the concert!

Go to www.knoxvillesymphony.com Then click on ‘Education & Community’ Then, on ‘Very Young People’s Concerts

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Character Acrostics Have students work with a partner, or a larger team, to create an acrostic for a Peter and the Wolf character of their choice. Example: WOLF might be W=wise / O=old / L=lean / F=fast

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Activities and Lessons

www.knoxvillesymphony.com/education-community/education-links www.classicsforkids.com http://www.dsokids.com/media/10709/2006-Play-Me-a-Story-Teacher-Guide.pdf

Additional Resources

Core Standards addressed by the concert and/or the activities in this Teacher’s Guide:

Creating MU:Cr1.1.1a MU:Cr2.1.1a

MU:Cr1.1.2a MU:Cr2.1.2a

MU:Cr1.1.PreKa MU:Cr2.1.PreKa

MU:Cr1.1.Ka MU:Cr2.1.Ka

MU:Re7.1.PreKa MU:Re7.2.PreKa MU:Re8.1.PreKa

MU:Re7.1.Ka MU:Re7.2.Ka MU:Re8.1.Ka

MU:Re7.1.1a MU:Re7.2.1a MU:Re8.1.1a

MU:Re7.1.2a MU:Re7.2.2a MU:Re8.1.2a

Responding

Teachers are encouraged to design their own post-concert activities to address the “MU:Cn” category.

Connecting

Performing MU:Pr4.1.PreKa MU:Pr4.3.PreKa

MU:Pr4.1.Ka MU:Pr4.3.Ka

MU:Pr4.1.1a MU:Pr4.3.1a

MU:Pr4.1.2a MU:Pr4.3.2a

For their generous support of our Very Young People’s Concerts,

the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra gratefully acknowledges:

The Boyd Family

City of Knoxville

Knox County

Lura-Lee G. and William E. Lange Foundation

MacLean Foundation

Rotary Club of Knoxville

Tennessee Arts Commission

UT Federal Credit Union

Special thanks to our Partners in Education:

Sara Cummings, Professional Development Specialist, Choral Music, Knox County Schools

Tracy Ward, Sequoyah Elementary School, for her assistance with this Teacher’s Guide

KSO Education Advisory Council

Steven Karidoyanes, Guest Conductor

Presents

Let’s Tell A Story!

Very Young People’s Concerts

Knoxville: January 28, 2016

Maryville: January 29, 2016

The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra

Presents

Let’s Tell A Story!

Music Can Make Your Life Complete Lucas Richman

The Birthday Present Lucas Richman

Overture to The Marriage of Figaro Wolfgang A. Mozart

Playground Escapades Lucas Richman

Blow the Man Down Traditional/arr. L. Richman

Flight of the Bumblebee Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Peter and the Wolf Sergei Prokofiev

Music Can Make Your Life Complete Lucas Richman

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Special thanks to our Partners in Education:

Sara Cummings, Professional Development Specialist, Choral Music, Knox County Schools

Tracy Ward, Sequoyah Elementary School, for her assistance with this Teacher’s Guide

KSO Education Advisory Council

For their generous support of our Very Young People’s Concerts, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra gratefully acknowledges:

The Boyd Family

Audience Job Description Please help make this a good performance by being a good audience:

Be quiet as the lights dim and the concert begins.

Clap when the concertmaster enters to lead the orchestra in tuning.

Clap when the conductor enters to begin the concert.

Clap to welcome any soloists during the concert.

Remember that the orchestra is in the same room with you, not in a movie or on TV. If you talk or make other noises, they can hear you. If you get up and leave in middle of the concert, they can see you. Please be quiet and still so the musicians can play their best for you and everyone can enjoy the concert.

Watch the conductor during the concert. When he puts his hands down and turns to face the audience, the piece is finished and you may clap to let the musicians know you liked it.

Acknowledgements

The Lura-Lee G. and William E. Lange

Foundation

Connect with us! 865-291-3310

www.knoxvillesymphony.com @knoxsymphony