Setting the Stage for a Lifetime of Success
After a terrific 6 week summer program, its time to move everything a children’s orchestra needs from our summer home at Prairie Ridge Elementary back to Woods Lake Elementary for our school-year program. The staff had fun being together one last time before our August break. We feel very grateful to the Kalamazoo Symphony and their big truck! Here are some photos
Over the past three weeks, Mr Jimmy has led our wind and percussion students in a composition project. Beginning with the basics of musical notation, the students have developed steadily to the point that this week they performed their finished compositions on their instruments.
We are especially proud that every student performed their piece with confidence and poise, for an eager and supportive audience of their fellow composers. Here’s a slide show featuring a few of the students and their compositions.
As we come to the end of our 6-week summer program for 2016, we are thankful to our partnership of sponsor organizations: Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, Communities in Schools of Kalamazoo, and Kalamazoo Public Schools.
Thank you for the instruments, the music, the teachers, the youth development support, the facilities, and the belief and support for our mission of providing opportunities for children and their families to enrich their lives through music!
Every student this summer has participated in Miss Deb’s Kindfulness training: a daily session of talking and practicing about how we think about our feelings, how we can calm our thoughts and our bodies, and how we can notice our surroundings, our responses, and how we choose our actions.
Here’s a link to Miss Deb’s YouTube Channel containing a number of guided mindfulness exercises she has made. Try them today and bring some Kindfulness to yourself!
As we begin our final week of the six-week summer program, we are busy preparing for our Family Night Concert. With a start time later in the day, we hope this event provides a convenient after-work opportunity to share time with Kids in Tune! Please join us to hear our summer pieces, see our work on projects in art, academics, and music classes, and to learn more about our Kids in Tune plans for the fall.
Thursday, August 4 5:00 pm Prairie Ridge Elementary School Cafeteria
We’re grateful for the beautiful summer day! Our annual noon-time concert on the mall in front of the stunning Burnham & Flower building was followed by a pizza party at Bimbo’s. Thanks to Benje Daneman from the Kalamazoo Symphony for his photographs. Here’s a slideshow:
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Today we traveled to Friendship Village to play a concert — the first of our Summer Tour.
Overture from Rossini's Barber of Seville Theme from Finale of Dvorak Symphony #9 Chamber Orchestra: Mozart's Eine Kleine, and Cantina Theme from Star Wars Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien Conga del Fuego Nuevo by Arturo Marquez
Here’s a little video clip:
Friendship Village in the Kiva (north from West Main on Drake Rd..see map below)
Wednesday, July 27 at 2:00pm
On our musical journey to Spain with Rossini’s Barber of Seville Overture, we’ve been learning about Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Today we mounted a display of our students’ self portraits. Many chose to make their portrait in a Cubist style, influenced by what we’ve leaned about Picasso:
At Kalamazoo Kids in Tune, our summer 2016 concert rep is anchored by
Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien. While studying the opening bugle call theme, we learned about bugle calls throughout history and composed our own bugle calls to announce various activities throughout our summer program day. Here’s a slideshow of our bugle call compositions, performed by our trumpet teacher Mr Jimmy
Kids In Tune