RECIPIENT OF THE 2008 CHORUS AMERICA EDUCATION OUTREACH AWARD

Program Overview

The award-winning Voices Within is an artist residency program designed for fifth and sixth grade classrooms that teaches students how to tap their creative voices to compose and perform their own original songs. The program curriculum combines elements of music composition, writing, improvisational games and ensemble performance that is delivered over a 10-week residency that includes a final culmination performance and follow-up evaluative visit. Working in close partnership with teachers and administrators at participating schools, the three Voices Within teaching artists (a composer, a lyricist, and a singer) create a safe environment that encourages collaboration and creative risk taking among the students. The teaching artists collaborate with the classroom teacher to integrate arts learning with other academic subjects, and students learn to identify and courageously express their inner voices.

The Curriculum

The Curriculum is aligned with the California VAPA (Visual and Performing Arts) Standards and introduces key ideas such as pitch, rhythm, melody, lyrics and how to apply these concepts into songwriting. Through a guided, collaborative process, students find an idea, express it as a lyric, establish a rhythm, compose a melody, put the lyric and melody together, refine, and then - ultimately - perform the song. Students are matched in teams with their peers, and teams are paired with corresponding teams from a partner classroom or school. Each class writes six songs during the residency. Song topics typically emerge from the classroom curriculum students are studying including Open Court Reading Curriculum. Past song inspirations have included such diverse topics as the Underground Railroad, women's suffrage, the solar system, photosynthesis, immigration to the United States, the Anasazi people, the human body, and even the periodic table of elements.

Voices Within culminates with an in-school assembly where participants premiere their original compositions. This final collaboration takes place as the students perform a special arrangement of their composition alongside the LA Master Chorale Chamber Singers.

Students who have completed a Voices Within residency have the opportunity to audition for the Voices Within Children's Choir, which seasonally performs at Walt Disney Concert Hall and at various other community venues and events.

Voices Within is an educational artists’ residency program developed for the Los Angeles Master Chorale by Marnie Mosiman, in collaboration with Bernardo Solano, Penka Kouneva, David O and Doug Cooney.