I’m back!

Hello Friends! It has been several years since I’ve kept up with this blog, and after many requests from families to keep up with the musical scene at CFS and beyond, I’m reviving it. Here you can still find my beginner ukulele tutorials (wow, do I look young!) and information about the Recorder Interactive beginning recorder method, as well as all my older posts. Soon I’ll be posting activities and lyrics from 2023-24 music class, local and virtual music resources, and odds and ends from my life as a music director and performer. I’m also excited to share ideas and activities inspired by my Mindful Schools and Breathe for Change mindfulness and yoga teacher training, especially ways to integrate mindfulness into music class and music-making in general.

If you’re looking for my writing blog, check out my personal website: http://josiskpurvis.com. 

Keep on singing! 🎵❤️

Life has not been boring: my 13-year old pets a shark in August 2023!

What's New: Music, Gadgets, and Wonderland

It's an exciting month at CFS! I am thrilled to have received an eBeam Edge, a portable gadget that turns any whiteboard into an interactive whiteboard with just a computer and projector. Here is a very bad photo of the setup in the LS studio:

Just a few things I'll be trying with the kids this month:

A music notation page in the eBeam Scrapbook

• Having Mountain and Forest students take turns writing music notation on the board, then playing back the compositions on recorders
• Planning Springfest with the LS first-years using Curio, which allows them to create mind-maps for brainstorming, insert media, song lyrics, etc., and later drag-and-drop virtual index cards to create a "storyboard" for the event.
• Sibelius Groovy Music products for teaching many musical concepts through composing
• Collaborative GarageBand projects with LS and MS students
• Rewarding great behavior with the Bleat Box!

The Bleat Box! So much fun...

In other news, River and Sky classes had fun creating their own "alphabet compositions," using musical concepts such as dynamics, legato and staccato, and timbre to create silly music for the whole class to perform. Here are pictures of a couple of our finished products:

Finally, this weekend we'll be showing off months of work in the Middle School with our musical production of "Alice in Wonderland!" Tickets are going FAST, so reserve yours with Nancy in the Center for Friday or Saturday evening or Saturday matinee. Lower and Middle school students will also get to see the production during the school day on Thursday.

A Quick Update

I've been so busy with both units that I haven't had any time to update recently! Here are a few highlights of the last 6 weeks:

--Trimester 2 has begun, and the Middle School musical, Michael Sirotta's "Alice in Wonderland," is underway. Our cast of 39 (see robots) is phenomenal, and Henry and I are so fortunate to have CFS alums Leah and Kiernan working with us on direction and choreography. Come see us perform February 11 and 12!

--While it was sad to say goodbye (for now) to my enthusiastic first trimester First-Year Music Rotation class, I am now enjoying my second group, all but two of whom I taught in the Lower School. One of my favorite parts of being a cross-unit teacher is that I get to be a part of the transformation from child to tween to teen. My first-years (they object when I call them my "ickle firsties") are exploring new territory in music class, from inventing instruments out of found objects to debating how music does and doesn't cross cultural boundaries.

--In the Lower School, recorders are going stronger than ever! Mountain and Forest students have learned "Jingle Bells" and are working on "S'vivon" for the holidays. Even the third-years are already further along than we've gotten in the previous two years. I can't wait to jump into reading notes on the staff and creating some ensemble music with recorders, ukuleles, and xylophones in January.

--River and Sky class have been singing, singing, singing in addition to playing drums, xylophones, and ukuleles. Both halves of River class were able to sing a bell song in four parts, then figure out how to play the parts on the xylophones! We're all ready for our annual holiday sing week, which begins Monday with daily sing-alongs in the Multi.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

CFS Middle School Play Cast Revealed By Robots!

The title pretty much says it all. Listen to the robots to hear the cast list for our 2011 Middle School production of Michael Sirotta's musical version of "Alice in Wonderland." The excitement is exciting! Thanks to XtraNormal.com for the technology.

Middle School visits River City, and a shout-out!

It was a big weekend at the Middle School--months of hard work culminated in an amazing run of "The Music Man." All three shows were sold out, and we even had quite a few folks at our open dress rehearsal. The actors were amazing! I feel so honored and blessed to work in such an energized, positive, and talented community. As I told many friends and parents, musically directing this show was such a blast that it didn't even feel like work--except learning to play that darn scene change music at the last minute! During the shows, I acted as musical director/pianist/producer of sound effects... and performed my debut on snare drum, hitherto heard only on my drum pads for Rock Band 2 for the Wii.

One of my favorite parts of the MS show experience was the opportunity to work with Toni (director) and Henry (producer). I look forward to many more musicals with this team. I'd also like to give a shout-out to Henry's blog, where he publishes his wonderful poetry. His most recent entry, "giving enough time," includes a sweet picture of my little one.

Trimester 2 is drawing to a close, and our third trimester will begin right after Feb. parent/teacher conferences. I'll miss musically directing, but I'll have the opportunity to teach two new classes. In "Renaissance Consort," students will learn about the Renaissance while putting together a consort of soprano and alto recorders. In "That's Whack," we'll pretty much whack on things. Those things will include Boomwhackers (musical plastic tubes), small percussion, and "found" instruments. Both groups will perform late in the trimester. I'll also be teaching the remaining third of the first-year class in music rotation.

GarageBand, Music Man, and LS Ukuleles

Welcome back to school, a few weeks late! There is so much going on it's hard to know where to start. Here are a few highlights:

In First-Year Music Rotation in the MS, we finished up our unit on melody and Orff instruments, and moved on to the much awaited GarageBand unit. I love using GarageBand with students because it's so intuitive--almost like a musical version of desktop publishing software. With just a little knowledge you can create an appealing first project, but the sky's the limit for a creative musician. Next week we'll have the mobile lab (thanks Jim!) to work on individual short projects, so last week, we learned the basics by creating a collaborative class song. Click here to listen. I think it sums up our trimester pretty well. :-) I'll post some of our individual projects next week, and stay tuned to hear about next year's GarageBand elective!

"Music Man" opens in less than a week. Yikes! At this point in a production, the directors always feel like they need another month to be ready for opening night... and this show is no different! But we have an awesome cast and crew, and I know we will pull it together. It's mostly sold out, but if you miss out on tickets, please come to our open dress rehearsal this Wed. from 6:30-9:30. I have thoroughly enjoyed my first musical theater project at CFS, and can't wait for the next!

The first week back from the holidays, I gave my Lower Schoolers a clue about a big surprise coming to music class. The clue was this: "There are hundreds, maybe thousands of songs that only have one or two chords in them." To their great frustration, I refused to answer any questions about the clue or the surprise. Last week, they were presented with 18 shiny new ukuleles!
Ukuleles have become a fixture in the Middle School, thanks to the efforts of Ida and Matthew. Now, we'll be starting them in the Lower School and kids will soon be able to take advanced ukulele electives in the Middle School. River and Sky will learn the playing position, the parts of the uke, the basics of the four strings, a basic strum or two, one or two chords, and some individual notes for playing tunes. Forest and Mountain will learn all this, then add on more chords and fingerpicking. We'll continue to play recorders in Forest and Mountain, too, so all our older kids will have wind and string experience.

I'll be sending an email to all our LS parents to give you more details about the ukuleles, including information if you'd like to have one at home (completely optional). I highly recommend High Strung in Durham for all your uke needs--it's a great local store and they are one of the only places that professionally sets up even their cheapest ukuleles. Once "Music Man" is over, I hope to create a couple of short video tutorials you can use at home if you decide to purchase a ukulele.

Happy Holidays!

I can hardly believe it's almost 2009, and I haven't updated my blog since November! Each time I start to update, the list of things to write about has grown even more overwhelming. So for now, I'll just talk about the holidays.

The LS just loves holiday music! We brought out the newly updated holiday songbooks right after Thanksgiving, and hardly a music class went by without some sing-along requests. We learned some Orff xylophone accompaniments to Christmas songs, made take-home jingle bell instruments, and had a Hanukkah celebration with a menorah, stories, songs, and dreidel. Forest and Mountain students learned "Jingle Bells" on their recorders, and some even moved on to "Silent Night," learning 4 new notes! A large number of students and their families showed up each morning for our before-school sing-alongs the week before break. I can't wait to unveil my big surprise for all LS music classes in mid-January... stay tuned!

"Music Man" is underway in the MS and I am having a blast musically directing my first CFS production. What a talented cast! Though I have to say I was a bit alarmed to find that we only have 5 weeks of rehearsal left before opening night...

Now, time to say a big THANK YOU for the generous gift certificates from LS and MS parents! Not only was I able to finish my holiday shopping in style, I purchased a tiny little camera that fits in my pocket, takes great pictures, and shoots HD video. I can't wait to use it in class! Here is my family playing their new ornament ocarinas:



I got an exciting musical gift from my family--Logic Studio, which is a full-featured music production studio for the Mac. Think GarageBand times about 10,000. Just a few years ago, it would have cost thousands of dollars to get anything close to this package. I wanted to use it right away, so on Christmas day I sequestered myself in the studio for a while to create this project. My sister-in-law commented that she had no idea her brother was married to Mannheim Steamroller. Me neither!

My dad played me an NPR podcast about one of Yo-Yo Ma's current projects, which can be found here. It's a contest to create a musical mix using Ma's cello performance of "Dona Nobis Pacem." I wish I had found out about this sooner, because I will be visiting family until after the deadline. To enter, I have 48 hours to pull a musical MacGyver--I have a laptop, a tiny MIDI entry keyboard, my orchestral flute, an iPod microphone, Christmas ornament ocarinas, and an assortment of preschool instruments to create a composition worthy of Yo-Yo Ma. If I make it, I'll be sure to post it here! At any rate, Indaba Music is a GREAT find--I can't wait to explore it some more.

I hope you are all having a safe and happy holiday and look forward to seeing you in 2009!