Music filled the air at Link as students and professional musicians collaborated in Making Music Together, a concert featuring original compositions written by eight students and performed by professional musicians. Students created their compositions in Mr. Hassan Anderson’s 8th grade music class. The culminating event of the students’ 8 week class was this concert, attended by the young composers and guests – Link board members and other friends of Link, during which student compositions were performed beautifully by Julliard graduates, Ms. Sofia Nowik on cello and Mr. Anderson on oboe.
In the introduction to the concert, Mr. Anderson explained that he approached the curriculum for 8th graders by thinking about the skills that musicians would need in the 21st century to be competitive and successful. They are, he averred, ” …the same skills that workers in a global economy will need…creativity, imagination, collaboration and technology.” Students created original music works utilizing NoteFlight, online music notation software that allows students to create, hear and edit their music on the computer.They wrote a minimum of 16 bars, both treble and bass clef measures. Students and the teaching artists worked together to ensure compositional correctness. And the final step was the concert!
At the concert, each of the eight students spoke about how they were inspired to create their works, and they and the guests were treated to a unique and wonderful concert experience. At the end of the concert, students met with guests to answer questions and to speak more about their compositions.
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