Shropshire Music Service

The BBC is looking for young classical musicians with star quality to take part in a brand new TV competition.

Perhaps you might like to bring this to the attention of older music students.  For further information, please see this link.

There is interesting discussion on the Eurovision Song Contest (which I managed to miss very easily as I was playing in a concert at the time) - It’s easy to mock this event … and why not!

Who takes the event seriously - what do your students think about it? Perhaps an interesting unit of work for your students would be to recreate the typical Euro-sound - all entries to my email address please!

If your students are interesting in games and composition, why not encourage them to combine the two and create music for Microsoft Xbox.

See the link to find out how you can record a soundtrack for forthcoming games.

Let us know if your students submit material …

It is likely that the law will change on royalties paid to performers - see link.

Since it was unanticipated that rock musicians would like to a ripe old age problems have arisen for UK performers such as Cliff Richards and Paul McCartney - this should be of interest to all our young composers who might be planning on rockin’ into their 80’s!

We all would wish to see a level playing field but can all teachers be relied upon not to give unreasonable ’support’ to their students - the issue is a live one as you will see from this BBC news link.

I recall moderation meetings in my early years as a music teacher when it was clear to me that examination work had been unreasonably assisted by a teacher and finding that the chief moderator was not at all interested in hearing the argument.

How do you feel about teachers having access to the listening CD prior to the examination?

Rock IT is a competition for school bands in the UK and Europe.
Registration is required via the rockit2007.org.uk website.

You can then submit a video of your band performing an original song.

If you get through the regional heats which will mostly be run via video conferencing you will be invited to the grand national final in Birmingham.

Please let us know of entries from your school by commenting on the blog.

I’ve recently been listening to music by Philip Glass, a composer who has often been described as ‘minimalist’ although he prefers to be thought of as a composer who works with patterns of sound. A recent (2006) recording by Naxos of the Symphony ‘Heroes’ is worthy of exploration in the classroom.

It uses as its inspiration the David Bowie album ‘Heroes’ - it does not try to give a simple orchestral rendering of the work but genuinely explores the themes in an orchestral texture. All the movements are based on tracks from the album, which was a collaboration between Brian Eno and Bowie.

Naxos is a superb label offering a massive range of material in a wide range of genre and at a low price.

For more information try the following links:

Naxos

Philip Glass - Heroes Symphony

David Bowie