Dear Educators, For over 90 years, tri-state area teachers and students have joined the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to experience great music and explore basic musical concepts through Young People’s Concerts. We believe access to the arts is important for every student, and that the skills developed through the study of music are easily related to other content areas and to life experiences. We are pleased to share this Curriculum Guide, which aims to promote an appreciation of the orchestra and develop and 21st Century Skills through music. We hope these materials provide a flexible but comprehensive resource that can be tailored to suit the needs of your students. In the following pages you’ll find information for teachers and chaperones, printable texts, worksheets and/or resources for students, and standards-based lesson plans. We believe music and the concert experience can enhance learning across the curriculum. These lesson plans and extensions are provided with the idea that classroom teachers can work along with arts specialists to make connections between music and other content areas, thus providing a more integrated teaching/ learning experience for children. The plans are intended to suggest activities we believe most teachers will be comfortable presenting, utilizing the concert music as a catalyst for the activity. If you are the music specialist, you may want to share these plans with an interested classroom colleague. Please visit our website (www.cincinnatisymphony.org/youngpeople) to access the listening tracks and additional resources. A link on the program page will take you to a password protected page where you can download specific tracks for each concert. You can also choose to download a .zip file which contains all the pieces for a particular concert. All audio files are in .mp3 format and may be played through iTunes or other media players or burned to a CD. You should have received a password with your order confirmation or in a follow-up email. If you have any questions about any of the CSO’s education programs, please email, call, or check our website for additional details. Finally, please don’t hesitate to let us know how we’re doing! We will send a short evaluation survey link after each semester of concerts, but please feel free to send your comments to us throughout the year so we can make our concerts and events the best they can be. Thank you for sharing the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra with your students, and thank you for the job you do each day to share knowledge and the love of learning with the young people in our community. We look forward to seeing you and your class at the Taft Theatre this season! Sincerely, Logan Kelly Manager of Education Programs [email protected] 513.744.3347 2 CONTENTS 4 From The Conductor 5 Concert Program 6 Music on the Concert 8 LESSON: An American Journey 14 LESSON: Simple Gifts (participate in the concert!) 19 LESSON: It Don’t Mean A Thing 21 LESSON: Mambo! Let’s Move! 23 LESSON: The New Old World of Dvorak’s Symphony 25 Your Trip to The Taft Theatre The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra The Taft Theatre LESSON: Concert Etiquette 3 A NOTE FROM GENE CHANG ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR Dear Friends, My name is Gene Chang, and I am the Assistant Conductor for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The musicians of the orchestra and I are thrilled to welcome all of you to the Taft Theatre for our performance of “An American Journey.” Together this journey will take us all over the country, and back in time as well! We'll visit the Wild West of the late 1800's, the great Jazz clubs of the 1930's, and the upper West Side of New York City in the 1950’s, to name just a few of the stops we'll make as we explore the history and geography of our country through music! You might be thinking, “What makes American music American?” Well, just like our nation itself, the music of America is a melting pot of many different cultural and historical backgrounds, resulting in a richly diverse array of melodies, rhythms, and moods. The music you’ll hear in the concert has been inspired by early American folk songs, patriotic sounds of wartime, spirituals of African slaves, and hymns of diverse religions. As this country developed, the music of immigrants became part of the sounds of America as well. People brought with them the music of their native places and incorporated them into the music of their new home, leading to new kinds of music like jazz, ragtime and gospel. As you explore, you’ll find that each piece of music on this concert has important connections to our world, country, and culture. Our music reflects who we are as a people: our humor, idealism, patriotism, sentimentality, and above all the ability to bring our individuality and each of our unique gifts and talents together as we work towards common endeavors - just like when musicians of the orchestra perform! 4 November 21, 2016 at 10:30am November 29, 2016 at 10:30am GENE CHANG conductor John Philip Sousa Stars & Stripes Forever Aaron Copland Variations on a Shaker Melody from Appalachian Spring Ferde Grofé On The Trail from Grand Canyon Suite Aaron Copland Hoe Down from Rodeo Antonin Dvořák Symphony No. 9, “New World” II. Largo Duke Ellington "It Don’t Mean A Thing Leonard Bernstein Mambo from West Side Story John Williams Main Theme from Star Wars 5 MUSIC ON THE CONCERT JOHN PHILIP SOUSA Stars and Stripes Forever March John Philip Sousa was born in Washington DC on November 6, 1854. He died on March 6, 1932. He was an American composer and conductor known particularly for composing American military and patriotic marches. The son of a trombonist in the Marine Band, he grew up in a musical family and learned to play many instruments. Like his father, John Philip Sousa joined the Marine Band as a musician and eventually became the band’s conductor. Be- cause his marches were so popular, he is known as "The March King". Stars & Stripes Forever is arguably the most famous march in the world and is recognized by the U.S. government as the official march of the United States. With crashing cymbals, bombastic brass and chirping piccolos, "The Stars and Stripes Forever!" gets millions of people on their feet, clapping and cheering every year. AARON COPLAND “Hoedown” from Rodeo Variations on a Shaker Melody from Appalachian Spring Composer, teacher, writer and conductor, Aaron Copland is one of the most famous and im- portant American composers of the last century. Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 14, 1900. As a young man, he studied music in France, but remained dedi- cated to writing music with a very “American” sound. Copland combines his classical training with jazz and the sounds of American folk songs to create a unique American sound. In Varia- tions on a Shaker Melody from Appalachian Spring, Copland was inspired by a traditional Shaker Melody called “Simple Gifts” and used it as the backbone of his composition. The other piece on the program written by Aaron Copland is “Hoedown”. Hoedown is from a ballet called Rodeo, which tells the story of an American western cowboy and his life. FERDE GROFE “On The Trail” from the Grand Canyon Suite Ferde Grofé was born in New York City on March 27, 1892 and grew up in Los Angeles, Cali- forina. As a young man, Grofe learned several instruments. He was a violist in the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra, and he also performed with the more popular jazz and dance bands in the area. Grofe combined combined elements of jazz, popular music, and classical music to compose The Grand Canyon Suite, inspired by the natural sights and sounds of the Grand Can- yon in Arizona. “On The Trail” describes describes a traveler and his donkey traveling the trail. The rhythmic and graceful music sounds like the hoof beats of the donkey. ANTONIN DVOŘÁK Mvmt. II, Largo from Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” Dvořák is the only composer on this concert who was not born in the United States, but he did live here for a time. He was born on September 8, 1841 in the village of Nelahozeves in Czecho- slovakia. In 1892, Dvořák moved to New York City to become the director of the National Con- servatory of Music. While in the United States, he became very interested in both Native American and African-American musical traditions. He drew upon these inspirations when he composed the Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” in 1893. The audience at the first per- formance went wild and this symphony has been so popular that a recording of it was taken to the moon by U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong! The “Largo” from this symphony features a beauti- ful melody from the English horn. 6 MUSIC ON THE CONCERT DUKE ELLINGTON It Don’t Mean A Thing A jazz composer, pianist, and big band leader Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was born in Washington D.C. on April 29 1899 and died on May 24, 1974. Duke started learning to play the piano when he was eight years old. When he was fifteen, he wrote his first composition “Soda Fountain Rag” while working as a server at the Poodle Dog Café. After moving to New York City, Duke formed a band and performed in the most popular music clubs in the city. Duke and his band performed a genre of music called jazz, a uniquely American style of music.