Last week, ICE visited Public School 234 in Manhattan, and were these kids pumped!
First graders in Pat's class room 229 welcomed musicians Jacob Greenberg, Claire Chase, Joshua Rubin, Rebekah Heller, and Ross Karre with a banner (see below), but produced even better creative work as they participated ICE's graphic notation workshop The Listening Room.
Following demos of traditional and extended techniques on each instrument (bassoon, clarinet, flute, toy piano, and percussion), the kids exploded with questions like "Why is your clarinet black?" and "What would happen if you blew really hard into the bass flute?", followed by wild guesses of how many percussion instruments exist ("40!", "100!", "1 million!").
Using a clever color-coded system of graphic notation, devised by ICE's Director of Education Jacob Greenberg, students then worked in small groups with an ICE musician, discovering their inner talent as composers. Each group produced complex and imaginative oversized scores that were then interpreted and performed by ICE for the students and their parents.
