This class depends on your active partiipation each week. This class is most interesting and fun when you share your responses to the music, the performers and the conductors of each concert. We coordinators will offer you plenty of different kinds of opportunities for you to share your responses responses and your insights into selected pieces. To prepare for each session, therefore, we ask you to listen to the selected pieces of music in preparation for each class, to use the active listening approach during your listening, and to attend the listed concerts. In addition, we hope some of you volunteer for one of these important ways of contributing to our class.
Imporant Topical Contributions:
1. Give a 10-minute or 20-minute presentation: Help us learn! Give a presentation on a topic from the topics list. (We will help with content, PowerPoint and sound clips.)
2. Summarize the ideas in a suggested reading: Help us do our reading! Write up an outline or a PowerPoint of a “suggested reading.” Give a brief summary in class.
3. Lead a listening session: Help us understand an upcoming piece. Show a video or play an audio version of the piece with intermittent pauses for the class’s responses, comments and questions.
4. Lead a post-concert discussion: Share a review of a concert, give your own responses, and ask for others responses.
5. Take a listening challenge: Listen to an up-coming piece that you do not know and track your listening experiences. Share your first impressions, your third and your fifth listening experiences. Then share your experiences with us. Point out the piece’s most exciting or interesting moments. Let us know if and how this piece or composer grows on you.
6. Demonstrate a musical instrument: Do you—or did you—play an instrument? Show it to us! You do not have to play a solo (but you could do so). Show us the instrument, play a few notes, explain its challenges and pleasures.
Two-fers: Two (or More) Short Contributions:
1. Tell a 5-minute personal story about a music experience: Share a personal experience with music. (The first time hearing a favorite piece or attending a concert; learning to play an instrument, etc.)
2. Tell a 5-minute composer bio.: Find out some interesting and helpful facts about a composer whose music we will be listening to at a concert. Give us a short overview.
3. Tell a 5-minute or 10 minute performer or conductor preview: Who are the guest artists and chamber groups we will be seeing? Why have they been selected for the program? What should we watch for and listen for during the concert?