Pirates and Parrots

the melody she submitted

My oldest daughter, a second grader, is a composer. Yup, I know. We are all composers. We make up and hum little tunes all the time. But she says that she is influenced by Grieg. (You could be too, if you listen to the schmaltzy Music Masters CD set that she did.) And unlike most of us, she has gotten recognition for being a composer. This is because she was fortunate enough to participate in a melody composition contest at Indiana University called, Kids Compose! She participated last year and was a finalist with a melody entitled, "I am a Monkey". This year she was a winner!

The MAC filling up with students

Here is how the competition works. Every year the Kids Compose project hosts two concerts, one for band and one for symphony orchestra. According to Ruth Boshkoff, who runs the program, 1,200 second graders from the local schools are bused to the band concert, and about the same number of fifth graders to the orchestra concert. Months before these concerts, elementary schoolchildren from the area in grades two through six submit original melodies of less than thirty-two bars. They may choose to notate their own melody or have someone else transcribe it for them. From the melodies submitted, twenty are selected as finalists by a panel of judges. From the finalists, eight are selected as winners. 

Musical Arts Center at Indiana University

These eight melodies are then arranged and orchestrated by four students from the Composition Department of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Each composition student combines two of the Kids Compose melodies into one work. The resulting arrangements are straightforward, interesting, concise, and preserve the identity of the kids' melodies. The IU students  communicate and interact with the kids while working on the arrangements, so the winners get at least a small say in the final product, not just the underlying melody. Then the arranged compositions are premiered at the aforementioned concerts held in IU's Musical Arts Center, a world-class performance hall.

MC- Brent Gault 

At the concert, the winning elementary students and their corresponding IU student arrangers are taken up to the stage and introduced to the audience. The children answer a few questions, and the composition students describe their pieces and a bit of the process. Then the conductor has an instrumentalist play each of the original melodies. Finally, the pieces are performed. In this manner, the students in the audience are able to understand the entire process. Then other works that are educational are played, interspersed with enlightening commentary. At the end of the concert the conductor and a few musicians answers questions from the audience. Both concerts are recorded, and each participating IU composition student and their corresponding grade school composer receives a performance CD.

Dina Neglia-Khachatryan

For this year's entry, my daughter picked out her melody on the piano in a gradual process over the course of a few months. When she was satisfied with her creation, I helped with the notation, with some assistance from my oldest boy- who actually plays piano, unlike me. She titled it, "Pirates and Parrots". (Pioneers and pirates have been the subject matter of most of the books she has selected to read lately.) When she played the piece for her violin instructor, Dina Neglia-Khachatryan, a doctoral student at IU, Dina noticed that what she played wasn't exactly what I had written. I had made an error by inserting triplets instead of eighth notes. Luckily we were able to submit a corrected copy just before the deadline. (Thanks, Dina!) A few weeks later were were informed by e-mail that my daughter was one of the winners. She was ecstatic.

Shortly thereafter, Ben Taylor contacted us. He's the doctoral student who was assigned to arrange the melodies of my daughter and her counterpart, Nicholas Narducci. When we met, Mr. Taylor was very gracious. He asked the children's permission to make some embellishments he had been thinking of adding. He also discussed with them his idea of the best way to meld the two melodies into one fluid piece. He even took requests for solos and instrumentation. My daughter was very reserved during this process. She was mildly intimidated by the fact that the other winner was an outgoing 5th grade boy who had a way with the piano. But she did manage to request that there be a lot of violins and lots of brass, especially those instruments played by her family (French horn, tuba, trumpet, trombone, etc.)  Nic's melody was named, "Song of the Singing Winds", like artist T. C. Steele's home named, "House of the Singing Winds" (at the local T.C. Steele State Historic Site.) So my daughter suggested melding the two song titles into, "Song of the Singing Pirates." Ben liked it, and it stuck. He was even thoughtful enough to send us a score in advance of the concert, as well as an MP3 recording from a composition program named, Finale.

The symphony orchestra (comprised of IU students) gets ready

watching the preparations

a harp played in her piece

Tuesday we all got suited up in extra-fancy duds and headed to the MAC for the performance. There were a huge number of buses cycling through the drop-off lane, which pleased my two year old. In the hall the excitement level was high, since 1,200 5th graders were out of school and sitting in the semi-dark.   When the concert began, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that Brent Gault was the MC this year. He is the director of the IU Children's Choir, and both of our oldest have been involved in that program.  

the orchestra performs

My girl was understandably nervous about being on stage, but did well when talking into the microphone. Mr. Taylor was generous with the limelight. And hearing the melody we had all been humming for months fully orchestrated was thrilling. In addition, the other selections played in the concert included fun things like a typewriter, a xylophone made out of bottles, a siren, a lottery wheel, something that made an airplane noise, and drum solos. My four year old thought that it was too loud. Perhaps that was because we were fortunate enough to sit in the second row!

the winners in this concert 

Although the music was good and I was exceedingly proud of our daughter, I particularly enjoyed the question and answer session after the concert. The French conductor was humorous, saying he loved to listen to the "American English" in country music songs, as the country twang was so lilting and musically interesting. He even sang a few bars with a heavy French accent to give us an example. Awesome. And who doesn't love to hear that the bassoonist didn't start playing until he was fourteen years old, not to mention that he likes to listen to "angry" music and heavy metal?! Even the percussionist had a lovely sense of humor, stating that he had started out on the drum set, moved into symphony percussion, and graduated to.... the typewriter. I think the biggest lesson my kids learned from this portion of the concert was that the musicians all practiced somewhere between four and six hours a day, not including the playing they did for their coursework or in their ensembles.

the obligatory family picture

After the concert we took the obligatory family photo in the lobby while literally hundreds of students streamed by. Then we ate a really nice lunch at a local restaurant (translate that to primarily mean "expensive".) The males in my family consumed the largest piece of tiramisu I have ever seen. And my daughters ended their meal by splitting something that had been described as "chocolate chip cheese cake". It was entirely chocolate, and coated in a thick layer of chocolate. It was so heavy it could have served as a doorstopper. Needless to say, they heartily enjoyed it. And they are lucky the waitress did not give me an accurate description!

Flowers from Grandmom and Pop Pop

Now, like everything in this life, it wasn't all the proverbial wine and roses. Things were run pretty fast and loose. Here are some of the big examples. 1) I was told the wrong date for the concert and only found the correct date out by happy accident. 2) Despite originally being assured that I could bring friends and relatives, and being given no limits on the number of seats that I could reserve (despite having asked for them) I was told at the last minute that due to seating being so tight I could only have seven. There are six people in my immediate family. I was also told that the seventh seat was for my daughter's violin instructor (who ended up not being able to come because of a scheduling conflict.) This meant that I had to un-invite all of our extended family, many of whom had taken the day off of work. Irritatingly enough, the whole first row and half of the second row were empty at the concert... sigh. 3) The night before the concert, when enquiring about some details that had not been given to us yet, I also enquired whether there would be an audio or video feed available in the lobby in case our two year old needed to be taken out during the performance. I was told that there would not be, and to leave my young children at home. So I agonized briefly over whether or not to bring them. Luckily my husband brought me to my senses by pointing out that the audience was composed of 5th graders, not ticket-paying-classical-music-connoisseurs. My little ones did very well. They even got complimented after the performance. (Heck, they even made it through a long, fancy lunch following the performance!) Oh, and there was a live audio-feed in the lobby.  4) We were a little perplexed and disappointed when the orchestra only played a few bars of my daughter's composition before premiering "Song of the Singing Pirates", and not the entire melody, as expected. But even despite such things as these, I'd say that it was a good experience overall, and a pretty good day! Her smile is proof of that. Her biggest disappointment is that she was told that winners of this contest are banned from competing again. 

Check back for video and audio files. I'll post them sometime in the future.