Category Archives: Music Week

Music Week 2015

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Feb 02 – 60, 2015

A week for and with music at SUIS Pudong

Music Week 2015 focused on experiencing music as something we all can do – something that naturally lives and breathes within us. Give it a stage, a microphone or a few art supplies and you will hear it!

Five (!) concerts were held and gave students’ talents the chance to be in the spotlight of a full auditorium – stage fright, goofs and roaring applause inclusive. Not only were the performances exciting, but the selection of Western and Chinese instruments and music, including a rendition of New Zealand’s “Haka” by our KS2 Choir, were as well. Prior to the concerts, students had been busy recording a wish. Speaking wishes for others into a black box, 468 voices created sound art and filled our school with the notion that our own happiness is also the happiness of others.

Building various instruments at the Art Station and enjoying different musical genres at one of four Listening Stations completed an exciting week. By combining different musical experiences – listening, performing and instrument building – Music Week accompanied our students to learn through creativity, sound and interaction.

Music Week – Listening Stations

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During Music Week, our students could tune in to 4 different Listening Stations. High quality, ear friendly headphones played music of different genres. Those with a keen ear could do a listening quiz and win house points while applying listening skills and knowledge of music.

 

Station 1: Peter and The Wolf (Sergei Prokofiev)

Station 2: Ah! Vous dirais–je, Maman (W. A. Mozart)

Station 3: Poem of Chinese Drums and others (Yim Hok Man)

Station 4: Help, Hey Jude, Nowhere Man and Octopus’ Garden (The Beatles)

 

Music Week – Performance Thursday

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The 2015 Music Week offered a total of 5 performances to our students! Many talents got on stage to showcase their music skills – singing or playing the piano, the flute, the pipa and others. Well done everybody!

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Music Week – Art Station

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Our Art Station allows students to build their own instruments during Music Week. Each student has the opportunity to become an instrument maker and build their own shaker, rainstick or other instrument – with results that sound great!

 

Make a Wish

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Make a Wish is an interactive sound installation created for the Music Week 2015 at Shanghai United International School, Pudong Campus, IS Primary Department in February 2015.

 

Students approach a recording interface – a white circle on the outside of a big black box – and record a wish into a microphone hidden behind it. A computer application realized in the programming environment MAX MSP triggers four independent, simultaneously working playback engines that randomly choose a recording and play it back on either the left, the right or on both speakers at randomly timed intervals. The result is a dynamic, ever changing sound collage of the recorded wishes.

Prior to recording, students spend time composing their wishes. In making a wish for someone else, they explore the notion of selflessness and “walk” along the continuum between personal desire and vital needs of others. Make a Wish was first exhibited in February 2015, after the Western and before Chinese New Year and therefore a time when Western and Chinese cultures traditionally make wishes.