Day Three in Musical Troupe was a delightful musical whirlwind. Class teacher Beth Pope has taught every age level of music in public and private sectors for decades. Her wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm for music was so apparent and truly contagious. Class began with lessons in proper pronunciation of Italian and Latin. The sounds for the vowels were written on the whiteboard, “i = ee; e = eh; a = ah; o = oh; u = oo.” Students spoke “Dona (Doh Nah) Nobis (Noh Bees) Pacem (Pah Chehm)” which Pope explained the meaning as “Grant us peace.”
As if no time to spare, the students quickly moved into several warmup exercises. Pope not only discussed how to sing, but what was happening physically. “The rib bone muscles aid the opening of the lungs,” she said. They began by stretching arms up and down followed by singing, “mommy made me mash my m & m’s” in a rhythmic ascending scale.
Another scale used “ha, ha, ha, ha, ha” going up and as Santa does, “ho, ho, ho, ho, ho” going down the scale. As they were singing, Pope said, “where’s your glottis?” and students began pointing at their voice box as they continued singing.
Warm up concluded with the pentatonic scale, which Pope said is the earliest known scale to exist. She started the next segment of their time together learning a Korean song titled “Arirang,” arranged by Scarlett Antaloczyt. Campers were a bit timid at first, but Ms. Pope announced, “I challenge you to make an error.” With permission to make mistakes, the next takes were considerably louder and more confident. They continued with another song where the class divided into two groups and echoed each other with rhythmic chants, “now is the time to seize the day,” and “answer the call and don’t delay.”
With the enormous amount of energy and strong musicality circulating, one would never know this was only the third day of camp. We can’t wait to see how they perform after two weeks of classes!
