Blog Archives

April 30, 2020: Week 7, Volume 4

4/30/2020

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 27 (due Monday, 5/4).
Details can be found in Google Classroom.

Updates

Click here for parent information about the current Remote Learning Assignment (sent 4/27/2020).

The first-ever Nipmuc Virtual Chorus Concert is available!
Click here for a short message and link to the concert (sent 4/29/2020).

Weekly Feature: Musical Records

This week we highlight a different category of random musical records each day. Thursday: "The most..."

The most expensive musical instrument sold at auction is the '"Lady Blunt'" Stradivarius violin and was sold at £9,808,000 ($15,875,800) by Tarisio Auctions (USA) in London, UK, on June, 20 2011. The auction was organized online on behalf of the Nippon Music Foundation and the proceeds went to the Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund.

The most instruments used in a piece of music was 315 and was achieved by Rupam Sarmah (India) and his team, performing a symphony composed and directed by Rupam Sarmah at Jorhat Sports Complex, Assam, India, on February 24, 2013. The number of different instruments used was 315, however the total number of instruments used (including duplications) was 370, plus 106 vocalists, making a grand total of 476 musicians who performed the symphony which lasted for just over half an hour.

The most viewed YouTube video in 24 hours is BTS (Boy With Luv) feat. Halsey' Official MV, which achieved 74,600,000 views from April 12-13, 2019.

This Month in Music: April

Happy last day of April!
(we made it)

Here's a look back at some important musical events that occurred during April:

April 1,1873: Sergei Rachmaninoff is born in Novgorod, Russia. Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor of the late Romantic period whose works are still widely performed.

April 4,1964: The Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" single goes #1 and stays there for 5 weeks.

April 7, 1915: Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan Gough) is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She first rose to prominence in the 1930’s with a unique style that reinvented the conventions of modern singing and performance.
Today, Billie Holiday is remembered for her musical masterpieces, her songwriting skills, creativity and courageous views on inequality and justice. Click here to learn more.

April 9, 1939: Marian Anderson sings before 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Anderson, already famous in the United States and Europe, gave the outdoor concert after she was denied use of a venue owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution, which had a white-artist-only performance clause. With the support of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt (who resigned from the DAR as a result of their decision) and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, Anderson performed for 25 minutes to a desegregated crowd that stretched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.

Anderson went on to have a long career as a performer - she died in 1993 at the age of 96. Click here to read a more detailed account of Anderson's Lincoln Memorial performance.

April 15,2001: Joey Ramone (born Jeffrey Ross Hyman) dies at the age of 49 following a seven-year battle with lymphoma. Ramone was an American musician, singer-songwriter, and lead vocalist of the punk rock band the Ramones, who are considered by some to be the first true punk rock group.

April 19,1963: Johnny Cash releases his single "Ring Of Fire," written by his future wife June Carter and Merle Kilgore.

April 22, 1876: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky completes his ballet "Swan Lake." Though it is now one of the most recognizable and frequently performed ballets of all time, it received only a lukewarm reception when it premiered in 1877. Click here to learn more.

April 26, 1970: The musical Company opens at Broadway's Alvin Theater, and ran for 690 performances, closing on January 1, 1972. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards, and won six. Company was composed by Stephen Sondheim, who is also known for Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and many others.

April 27,1810: Ludwig van Beethoven, generally considered one of the greatest composers of all time, is thought to have composed one of his most recognizable piano works, "Fur Elise."
Click here to learn more.

April 30,1885: The Boston Pops Orchestra forms, thanks to the efforts of Henry Lee Higginson, who had also founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra four years earlier in 1881. The Pops continues to perform for audiences in Boston and around the world, and are especially known for their annual July 4th Fireworks Spectacular Concert at the Esplanade, as well as collaborations with many well known musicians and celebrities.

0 Comments

April 29, 2020: Week 7, Volume 3

4/29/2020

1 Comment

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 27 (due Monday, 5/4).
Details can be found in Google Classroom.

Updates

Click here for parent information about the current Remote Learning Assignment (sent 4/27/2020).

Weekly Feature: Musical Records

This week we highlight a different category of random musical records each day. Wednesday: "The loudest..."

Today's records need a little context. The graphic below, taken from the EarQ website, shows the average decibel (dB) level of common sounds:

Now you have something to compare these records to:

The loudest scream (individual) is held by Jill Drake (UK). Her scream reached 129 dB when measured at the Halloween festivities held in the Millennium Dome, London, UK in October 2000.

The loudest simultaneous drum hit by a crowd measures 127.7 dB, organized by Oscar Martinez Escamilla (Spain) in Quintanar de la Orden, Toledo, Spain, on May 25, 2019. This attempt involved over 100 drummers.

The loudest pipe organ is the Vox Maris, built by the German organ-building company Hey Orgelbau, which produced a reading of 138.4 dB when it was tested in Urspringen, Germany, on October 21, 2011.
The Vox Maris ("Sound of the Sea") is an organ like no other. It was built for the Yeosu Expo 2012 in Korea. It featured 80 pipes (some up to 32 feet long) that were installed on the outside of the Expo site's Sky Tower. When played, it could be heard from 3-4 miles away.

Recommended Resource: BBC Music Planet

Music Planet (find the website here) is a great resource to learn about music from around the world. Watch Video Clips, download full episodes of the Podcast, or browse through the World Music Archive.

1 Comment

April 28: Week 7, Volume 2

4/28/2020

1 Comment

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 27 (due Monday, 5/4).
Details can be found in Google Classroom.

Updates

Click here for parent information about the current Remote Learning Assignment (sent 4/27/2020).

Weekly Feature: Musical Records

This week we highlight a different category of random musical records each day. Tuesday: "The longest..."

The longest music video was released in November 2013 when Pharrell Williams published the "world's first 24-hour music video", for his single "Happy", on the website 24hoursofhappy.com. The star-studded video features people dancing and miming to the four-minute track, which is played on a loop 360 times.

I do not recommend listening to any song for 24 hours straight ... but if you really want to watch "24 Hours of Happy," you can do so here.

The longest continuous vocal note is 2 min 1.07 sec, and was achieved by Richard Fink IV in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, on November 17, 2019.

The longest vocal note whilst holding a person aloft (why?) is 28.52 seconds and was achieved by Donovan Jones (USA) holding Rebecca Peache (UK) on the set of Officially Amazing at the Greentop Circus, Sheffield, UK, on August 7, 2015.

The longest title of a music album is 156 words long, achieved by Chumbawamba (UK) with the album "The Boy Bands Have Won", released March 3, 2008.

The full title of the album, pictured above:
"The Boy Bands Have Won, and All the Copyists and the Tribute Bands and the TV Talent Show Producers Have Won, If We Allow Our Culture to Be Shaped by Mimicry, Whether from Lack of Ideas or from Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try to Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother's Hand-Me-Down Jacket and Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It to the Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don't Just Regurgitate Creative History, or Hold Art and Music and Literature as Fixed, Untouchable and Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try to 'Guard' Any Particular Form of Music Are, Like the Copyists and Manufactured Bands, Doing It the Worst Disservice, Because the Only Thing That You Can Do to Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It's Over, Then It's Done, and the Boy Bands Have Won."

Recommended Resource: Jazz 24/7 Live

Jazz 24/7 presents
The Shana Tucker Quartet: "A Live Informance"
Tuesday, April 28 at 7pm
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the WGBH Jazz 24/7 Live webpage

Join host Tessil Collins for a live musical “Informance” with the Shana Tucker Quartet as they entertain and inform us about Tucker’s ChamberSoul Arts Collective and how it merges/intersects with jazz, improvisation and songwriting. Through live and pre-recorded performances, Tucker and the ensemble will explore the creative process broadly and how it is affected by stay-at-home orders. Tucker (cello, vocals), Christian Tamburr (piano, MD), Will Ledbetter (bass, guitar) and Al Sergel, IV (drums) will be interviewed by Collins. The audience will have the opportunity to interact with Tucker and the other performers.

Shana Tucker is a vocalist, cellist, and songwriter. Her unique style blends jazz, soul, folk, pop, and R&B:

Want to hear more? Visit Tucker's website here, and tune in to the live Jazz 24/7 webcast here at 7pm on Tuesday.

1 Comment

April 27, 2020: Week 7, Volume 1

4/27/2020

0 Comments

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 27 (due Monday, 5/4).
Details can be found in Google Classroom.

Updates

Click here for parent information about the current Remote Learning Assignment (sent 4/27/2020)

Virtual Choir Update

Thank you to everyone who sent videos for the Virtual Choir! It is almost ready to share! I am finishing a few last details and will send you a link to the Virtual Vertical Concert in the next few days. This screenshot from the video of "My Very Own" will give you a little preview of what a 48-person Virtual Choir looks like:

Weekly Feature: Musical Records

This week we highlight a different category of random musical records each day - staring with "The Largest ...."

The largest triangle ensemble consists of 1,521 people, and was achieved by students of The Music Man Project at an event organized by David Stanley in London, United Kingdom, on October 15, 2017.

The largest music lesson involved 2,869 participants learning how to play the ukulele, and was achieved in Malaysia on May 15, 2019. Students aged 7-12 took part in this music lesson lasting 33 minutes 3.4 seconds.

Each student had their own ukulele and watched the single instructor, Ric Cho, on stage or from one of the 5 screens set up streaming live around the venue. Ric taught them how to hold the instrument, a few strumming techniques and finished with a splendid rendition of "Baby Shark," with all participants playing along.

On August 5, 1989, the largest game of musical chairs began with 8,238 participants at the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore. Three and a half hours later, the game ended with the lucky 15-year-old winner Xu Chong Wei on the last precious chair.

And finally, the largest human image of a musical instrument was formed by 1,660 people creating the shape of a saxophone in the Promenade du Paillon in Nice, France, on 21 June 2014.

Recommended Resource: The Met Opera

Branch out this week and try watching an opera! The world renowned Metropolitan Opera has announced plans to stream some of its famous operas to online audiences with Nightly Met Opera Streams, recordings of previous performances all pulled from its Live in HD series. You can find the performances on the homepage of metopera.org at 7:30pm each evening, where they’ll be available to stream for 20 hours once posted, free of charge. Click here for a full schedule and to learn more about each opera.

0 Comments

April 17: Week 5, Volume 5

4/17/2020

0 Comments

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 13 (due Monday, 4/20).
Details can be found in Google Classroom. Practice Resources can be found here.

Please note that Term 3 ends TODAY. All work, including make-up assignments and Remote Learning assignments must be submitted to Ms. Simmonds by Monday, April 20.

Updates

Remote Learning assignments this week are based on singers' chorus section - click on your child's class to read an update:
-- B block -- E block -- G block --

Click here for an update about the Virginia Trip (sent 4/3/2020)

This Day in Music

According to the "National Day Calendar" (learn more here), April 17 is:

National Crawfish Day
International Bat Appreciation Day
National Cheeseball Day
National Ellis Island Family History Day
International Haiku Poetry Day ***(see below for more information)
National Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet Day (Third Friday in April)

There are also some interesting pieces of music history that happened on April 17:

April 17,1882: Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel is born in Lipnik, Moravia, Austria-Hungary. Schnabel would become best known for his performances and recordings of all 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas. You can hear 2 of the most well-known sonatas below, and learn more about Artur Schnabel here.

April 17,1961: The 33rd Academy Awards take place at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, honoring movies released in 1960. Watch below to see the awards presented for film scoring, and click here to learn more about the 33rd Academy Awards:

April 17,1974: Victoria Beckham [Adams], English singer who would go on to become "Posh Spice in the Spice Girls," is born in Harlow, Essex.

April 17,2011: Game of Thrones premieres on HBO. Though not strictly a musical event, the show does feature some great music - listen to the main title theme below.

Game of Thrones was scored by German composer Ramin Djawadi, a prolific film composer who also scored Iron Man, Wesworld, and A Wrinkle in Time. Click here to learn more.

International Haiku Poetry Day

According to The Haiku Foundation (website here), "April 17 is the day the whole world honors haiku."

How can you celebrate? Write a haiku!

What should you write about? Here's some inspiration:
Processing Social Distancing with Haiku
Haiku Walkabout
Simple Tips for Haiku Writing

Happy April Break!

The Daily Chorus News will be taking a break next week, and I hope that you will enjoy some time off from Zoom as well! When we return, I sincerely hope that Week 7 will be the final week of Daily Chorus News.

So have a great break, everyone, and in the words of the Norway, Maine police department:

0 Comments

April 16, 2020: Week 5, Volume 4

4/16/2020

0 Comments

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 13 (due Monday, 4/20).
Details can be found in Google Classroom. Practice Resources can be found here.

Updates

This Day in Music

According to the "National Day Calendar" (learn more here), April 16 is (among other things):

National Eggs Benedict Day
National Orchid Day
National Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day
National High Five Day (Third Thursday in April)

There are also some interesting pieces of music history that happened on April 16:

April 16,1854: Franz Liszt's symphonic poem Mazeppa premieres at the Court Theatre in Weimar, Germany. Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a prolific 19th-century Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist. Mazeppa is the sixth in the cycle of thirteen symphonic poems written during Liszt's time in Weimar. Listen to Mazeppa here:

April 16, 1924: Henry Mancini, American composer and conductor is born in Cleveland, Ohio. Mancini created many memorable film scores, including Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Pink Panther, and Victor/Victoria, and recorded over 90 albums with styles varying from big band to jazz to classical to pop. During his lifetime, Mancini won 20 Grammy Awards and 4 Academy Awards.

April 16, 1940: Heitor Villa-Lobos' opera Izaht premieres in Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos (5 March 1887 — 17 November 1959) was one of the foremost Latin American composers of the 20th century. He was known for creating distinctively Brazilian compositions by weaving folk themes and rhythms of Portuguese, Indian, and African origins into his music. Listen to the overture from Izaht here:

April 16, 1971: Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, Mexican-American singer-songwriter known as the Queen of Tejano music, is born in Lake Jackson, Texas. Selena Quintanilla made her recording debut in the '80s, going on to become an award-winning recording artist in the Latin music scene with albums like Amor Prohibido and Selena Live. In 1995, she was murdered by the founder of her fan club at age 23. Her last album, Dreaming of You, was released posthumously in 1995.

This performance was recorded on February 26, 1995, at the Houston Astrodome. The singer shared the concert with Tejano singer Emilio Navaira and performed to 66,994 people, which broke the previous attendance record held by Selena the previous year. The concert was critically acclaimed for outperforming ticket sales by country music singers Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, and George Strait. Selena's performance at the astrodome became her final televised concert before she was shot and killed on March 31, 1995.

Featured Resource: Virtual Concert Halls

The American Choral Directors Association has put together a "Virtual Concert Hall" to showcase singers' performances at a time when concert halls are closed down. Check out the website here to watch some great choral performances!

0 Comments

April 15, 2020: Week 5, Volume 3

4/15/2020

0 Comments

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 13 (due Monday, 4/20).
Details can be found in Google Classroom. Practice Resources can be found here.

Updates

This Day in Music

According to the "National Day Calendar" (learn more here), April 15 is (among other things):

National Glazed Spiral Ham Day
National Rubber Eraser Day
National Take a Wild Guess Day
National Tax Day
National Titanic Remembrance Day

There are also some interesting pieces of music history that happened on April 15:

April 15, 1729: Johann Sebastian Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" premieres in Leipzig, Germany. It sets chapters 26 and 27 of the Gospel of Matthew to music, with interspersed chorales and arias and is widely regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of classical sacred music. Click here to learn more.

April 15, 1896: The first Modern Olympic Games close in Athens, Greece. This may not seem like an important musical event - but did you know that the Olympic Games used to include fine arts? Between the years of 1912 and 1952, juries awarded a total of 151 medals to original works in the fine arts inspired by athletic endeavors, including music. The first-ever Gold Medal for Music was won by Italian composer and pianist Riccardo Barthelemy for his "Marcia trionfale olimpica" ("Olympic Triumphal March"). Click here to learn more.

April 15, 1961: The Music Man closes at Broadway's Majestic Theater after 1,375 performances. The show opened in 1957 and became a hit, winning five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The cast album won the first Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and spent 245 weeks on the Billboard charts. The show's success led to revivals, including a long-running 2000 Broadway revival and a popular 1962 film adaptation. It is frequently produced by both professional and amateur theater companies. Click here to learn more.

April 15, 2019: Aretha Franklin posthumously receives the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation honor. She is the solo first woman to receive the award, which is not necessarily given every year. Franklin was recognized "for her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades." Learn more here.

Aretha Franklin is arguably one of the most recognizable voices of all times, and she impressed audiences throughout the span of her career: from her string of early hits in the 1960s to her final performances in the 2010s:

Aretha Franklin performs "The Shoop Shoop Song" in 1964.

Aretha Franklin performs "Natural Woman" at the Kennedy Center Awards in 2015. The performance was a tribute to fellow artist and honoree Carole King, who wrote the song for Franklin in 1967, and clearly loved this rendition of it!

The Catchiest Pop Song Ever?

In 2014, a group of researchers in England released an online test called "Hooked on Music." It contained one thousand clips from pop hits, going all the way back to the 1940s, and it asked 12,000 participants to identify songs as fast as possible. They found that "Wannabe" by The Spice Girls was the catchiest song: people were able to recognize it in about 2.3 seconds, which was way below the 5-second average of identifying other popular songs.

Click here to learn more, and watch the Top 10 Catchiest Songs, as identified by the survey:

So what do you think? Is "Wannabe" really the catchiest pop song? What song would you vote for as the catchiest of all times?

0 Comments

April 14, 2020: Week 5, Volume 2

4/14/2020

1 Comment

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 13 (due Monday, 4/20).
Details can be found in Google Classroom. Practice Resources can be found here.

Updates

This Day in Music

According to the "National Day Calendar" (learn more here), April 14 is (among other things):

National Dolphin Day
National Gardening Day
National Pecan Day**
National Reach as High as You Can Day
Look up at the Sky Day

(*Ms. Simmonds' disclaimer: you may only celebrate National Pecan Day if you pronounce pecan correctly. It is not a PEE-can. It is a puh-CAHN. You will not change my mind. This has been a public service announcement; thank you for your time.)

There are also some interesting pieces of music history that happened on April 14:

April 14, 1759: George Frederic Handel dies at age 74 (we learned about him yesterday, and the premiere of his famous work, Messiah).

April 14, 1960: Bye Bye Birdie opens on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre. It would transfer to the 54th Street Theatre and then the Shubert Theatre before closing on October 7, 1961, after 607 performances. Click here to learn more.

April 14, 2000: Heavy-metal band Metallica files a lawsuit against music sharing phenomenon Napster. Metallica vs. Napster, Inc. was the first case that involved an artist suing a peer-to-peer file sharing software company, and it would eventually lead the movement against file-sharing programs. The band not only requested that their entire catalog be removed from the site, but also that the nearly 330,000 uses that had downloaded their music be removed from Napster altogether. Despite resulting in criticism from many of their fans, the band has no regrets. Read more here.

April 14, 2018: Beyoncé is the first black woman to headline the Coachella Music Festival. Her performance on this day became the most-watched performance ever on YouTube.

Featured Resource: EarSketch

EarSketch helps you learn coding through music. Use sounds from the EarSketch library or your own sounds, along with Python or JavaScript code, to produce studio quality music. EarSketch is completely free to use and is entirely web-based, so there's nothing to download or install. Get started here.

1 Comment

April 13, 2020: Week 5, Volume 1

4/13/2020

0 Comments

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 13 (due Monday, 4/20).
Details can be found in Google Classroom. Practice Resources can be found here.

Updates

This Day in Music

According to the "National Day Calendar" (learn more here), April 13 is National Make Lunch Count Day, National Peach Cobbler Day, National Scrabble Day, and National Thomas Jefferson Day. There are also some interesting pieces of music history that happened on April 13:

April 13, 1742: George Frederic Handel's oratorio Messiah is performed for the first time at New Music Hall in Dublin. Now, more than 275 years later, Messiah is still widely performed. Click here to learn more.

April 13, 1958: American pianist Van Cliburn wins the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He would go on to become one of the most well-known classical pianists. Click here to learn more about Van Cliburn.

In this 2008 interview, Van Cliburn reflects on that experience. I know it's a bit long, but I highly recommend watching the whole thing! However, if you don't have the time/patience, skip to 6:00 to hear about Van Cliburn's musical journey as a child and his practice and performance habits:

April 13, 1965: The 7th Annual Grammy Awards are held at at Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.

Winners Included:
- Record of the Year: Astrud Gilberto & Stan Getz for "The Girl from Ipanema"
- Album of the Year: João Gilberto & Stan Getz for Getz/Gilberto
- Song of the Year: Jerry Herman (songwriter) for "Hello, Dolly!" performed by Louis Armstrong
- Best New Artist: The Beatles

Click here to learn more.

April 13, 2019:
BTS is the first K-pop band to perform on Saturday Night Live

Scenes from Nipmuc Singers

Morgann makes peanut butter chocolate drop cookies, assisted by Bite-Bite, who was essential in providing moral support and taste testing.

Send a picture and/or description of what you've been up to these days here!

0 Comments

April 9, 2020: Week 4, Volume 4

4/9/2020

0 Comments

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 6 (due Monday, 4/13).
Details can be found in Google Classroom.

Updates

- Click here for parent information about the current Remote Learning Assignment (sent 4/6/2020)

- Click here for an update about the Virginia Trip (sent 4/3/2020)

Listening Recommendation:
The Bach Project - #cultureconnectsus

From The Bach Project website:

"In August 2018, Yo-Yo Ma began a two-year journey to perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s six suites for solo cello in 36 locations around the world, music that is among the first Yo-Yo ever learned when he began playing the cello at age four. The project is motivated not only by his six-decade relationship with the music, but also by Bach’s ability to speak to our shared humanity at a time when our civic conversation is so often focused on division."

Click here to learn more.

Weekly Feature: Unique Ensembles

247 Matryomins

(just watch the video first. yes, those are Matryoshka or Russian Nesting Dolls)

"Ensemble Da" is a large group of Matryomin players. What is a Matryomin? (Also: why are they wearing stethoscopes and holding dolls?) To answer these questions, first we need to talk about another instrument:

The Theremin

The theremin was invented in 1920 by a Russian physicist named Lev Termen (in the United States his name was Leon Theremin). Besides looking like no other instrument, the theremin is unique in that it is played without being touched. Two antennas protrude from the theremin - one controlling pitch, and the other controlling volume. As a hand approaches the vertical antenna, the pitch gets higher. Approaching the horizontal antenna makes the volume softer. Because there is no physical contact with the instrument, playing the theremin in a precise melodic way requires practiced skill and keen attention to pitch.

The theremin is actually incredibly difficult to play, since it the distance from the antenna that controls pitch and volume.

Even when played well, it has a somewhat interesting sound, as you can hear in this clip.

As you can imagine, the theremin has never been a hugely popular instrument, though it does have a very loyal fanbase (don't believe me?visit http://thereminworld.com/).

In 2000, Japanese thereminist Masami Takeuchi developed the Matryomin, in an attempt to make the instrument "more accessible" to the masses. He adapted the theremin to have only 1 antenna, and inserted it into a Matryoksha doll (more commonly known as a Russian Nesting Doll). Why? Your guess is as good as mine. But it resulted in the strangely fascinating "Ensemble Da" that you saw above. Click here to learn more.

And here's one more video of "Ensemble Da," which raises even more questions: why are they in stairwells and on the beach and holding umbrellas? We may never know. But it turns out that the stethoscopes are just so each player can hear and their Matryomin and play in tune.

Thus concludes this week's tour of Unique Ensembles. Since Friday would have been a day off from school, there won't be a new Daily Chorus News.

Happy weekend!
Enjoy another picture of my cat, who is also practicing social distancing by staring longingly at my neighbor's cat through the window.

Sick of seeing pictures of my cat? Send a picture of something fun you've been doing lately, or maybe something delicious you've baked? Email Ms. Simmonds here.

0 Comments

<<Previous

Current Assignment(s)

Updates

Weekly Feature: Musical Records

This Month in Music: April

Current Assignment(s)

Updates

Weekly Feature: Musical Records

Recommended Resource: BBC Music Planet

​

Current Assignment(s)

Updates

Weekly Feature: Musical Records

Recommended Resource: Jazz 24/7 Live

Current Assignment(s)

Updates

Virtual Choir Update

Weekly Feature: Musical Records

Recommended Resource: The Met Opera

Current Assignment(s)

Updates

This Day in Music

International Haiku Poetry Day

Happy April Break!

Current Assignment(s)

Updates

This Day in Music

Featured Resource: Virtual Concert Halls

Current Assignment(s)

Updates

This Day in Music

The Catchiest Pop Song Ever?

Current Assignment(s)

Updates

This Day in Music

Featured Resource: EarSketch

Current Assignment(s)

Updates

This Day in Music

Scenes from Nipmuc Singers

Current Assignment(s)

Updates

Listening Recommendation:The Bach Project - #cultureconnectsus

Weekly Feature: Unique Ensembles

Brought to you by:

Contribute

Archives

Listening Recommendation:
The Bach Project - #cultureconnectsus