Ragazzi Sings

The Mozart Effect

2012-01-26T17:04:00.001-08:00

Music and Cognition: The Mozart Effect Revisited

COMMENTS

In 1993, researchers at UC Irvine published a study in the journal Nature showing that 36 undergrads temporarily improved their spatial-reasoning IQ scores after listening to part of Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major. The story got blown up and oversimplified in the mainstream media, which trumpeted the so-called Mozart effect, the notion that listening to classical music makes you smarter.

The idea was picked up by politicians and popularized by people like Don Campbell, who wrote the best-selling books The Mozart Effect and The Mozart Effect for Children. He actually trademarked "The Mozart Effect" name, and built a small empire peddling CDs and books that variously claim to heal the body and stimulate your baby's brain. The Irvine researchers, Dr. Francis Rauscher and the late Dr. Gordon Shaw, distanced themselves from all the hype, which they said distorted their findings.

"Generalizing these results to children is one of the first things that went wrong," Rauscher told NPR in 2010. "Somehow or another the myth started exploding that children that listen to classical music from a young age will do better on the SAT, they'll score better on intelligence tests in general, and so forth."

Yet for all the debate about the effect of music listening and training on general cognitive ability, a growing body of research strongly suggests that studying musiccan enhance a child's learning skills, including reading. A significant new Canadian study shows that preschoolers who participated in a computerized musical training program improved their verbal intelligence scores after only 20 days.

"Music and language have common biological mechanisms. Musical training strengthens them," says Dr. Nina Kraus, a noted neurobiologist who runs Northwestern University's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, via e-mail.

"Hear" Training

Kraus' research has shown that musicians, who memorize sounds and patterns, can process music and language better than people who don't have musical training. Over time, she says, musical experience fundamentally changes how the nervous system responds to sound. Among other things, musicians are better at hearing speech in noise, an important skill for kids trying to learn in a bustling classroom.

"Music and language have common biological mechanisms. Musical training strengthens them." – Dr. Nina Kraus

Kraus argues that music should be taught in schools in part because it could engage attention and memory skills, strengthening kids' "phonological processing" and enhancing their reading skills. As she puts it, reading and music both involve mapping sounds to meaning.

"In addition to contributing to great amusement and well-being, practicing music does, in fact, appear to make you smarter — at least smarter when it comes to how you hear," Kraus and her Northwestern colleague, Dana Strait, wrote in a recent study, published in Music Perception, titled "Playing Music for a Smarter Ear: Cognitive, Perceptual and Neurobiological Evidence."

Kraus, whose lab is in the midst of a four-year study on music education and adolescent brain development, was impressed by a study published in October by researchers at York University in Toronto. It showed a rise in verbal IQ scores among young kids who took an interactive music-training program.

Exploring the Link Between Music and Language

The study's title echoes its conclusion: "Short-Term Music Training Enhances Verbal Intelligence and Executive Function."

Directed by Dr. Sylvain Moreno, now the lead scientist at the Center for Brain Fitness at the University of Toronto's Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, the study focused on 48 kids between the ages of 4 and 6. Half of them participated in an interactive, computerized music-training program; the other half took part in a similar program about visual art. Both software programs were designed by Moreno, using the same cartoon characters, graphics, and tone.

The music kids learned about rhythm, pitch, melody, singing, and basic theory. The art kids learned about line, color, shape, dimension, and perspective. None of the kids had studied music or art before, and none of their parents were professional musicians or artists. The kids participated in the training for two hours a day over a 20-day period.

"The more the music training induced changes in the brain, the more the children improved their intelligence scores." – Dr. Sylvain Moreno

Before and after completing the programs, each child took the oral Vocabulary and Block Design subtests of the standardized Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of the Intelligence test (the vocabulary to measure verbal ability, the block design to gauge spatial ability). The children were also given a "go/no-go" task — pushing a button when a white shape flashed on a computer screen, or refraining from pushing it when a purple one appeared — while electrodes were attached to their heads to record their brain activity.

There was no appreciable difference in IQ scores between the music kids and art kids before the training. But afterward, more than 90 percent of the music kids improved their verbal scores — some by 14 points — while the art kids showed no significant improvement in verbal ability, and only slight improvement in their spatial skills.

Similarly, the music kids showed greater accuracy on the "go/no-go" task after the training. And their brain waves had notably larger peak amplitudes, showing an increase in brain activity. The task, which engages the fronto-parietal networks of the brain that deal with attention, measures what the brain people call executive function.

Skills That Transfer

"Through this musical training, we were able to stimulate a special brain area, and through this stimulation, we were able to raise the verbal intelligence of these kids," says the French-born Moreno, on the horn from his Toronto lab. "It's astonishing that we can do that after 20 days!"

He calls the study, published in Psychological Science, a scientific breakthrough. It's the first to show a causal relationship between musical training and improved intelligence scores and attention, he says, and it demonstrates that the transfer of one cognitive skill to another can occur in early childhood.

"We had brain plasticity in children after 20 days," he says. "The brain behavior changed after the musical training. And what we found that was crucial was that the change in intelligence was correlated with the change in the brain: The more the music training induced changes in the brain, the more the children improved their intelligence scores."

Moreno thinks these findings have important implications for people involved in education and the study of brain plasticity.

The results tell him that "music training is incredibly powerful, and there is a special link between music and these core skills of the brain. ... This curriculum, through the power of music, is like a switch button for the cognitive development of children. You turn the switch on to learn."

Nina Kraus, whose research Moreno and his colleagues cite in their report, gives high marks to the Canadians' work. "It's a very important study," she says. "The effects in verbal IQ scores is a significant discovery."

The causal effect of Lady Gaga on teen literacy awaits further study.

Jesse Hamlin has written for The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications over the past 30 years on a wide range of music and art, covering jazz musicians and symphonic conductors, sculptors, poets, and architects. He has also written for The New York Times, Art & Auction and Columbia magazines, as well as liner notes for CDs by Stan Getz and Cal Tjader.

--
Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

What does it means to be human?

2012-01-03T12:04:00.001-08:00

What does it mean to be human?

Scientists and philosophers have asked this question over the years. As they uncover evidence of earlier humans, scientists have discovered that 30,000 and more years ago there were two branches of the human family, with the Neanderthals living side by side with our ancestors. In the movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the question is raised: what distinguishes the humans from the other creatures alive at that early time. The drawings in the recently discovered Chauvet caves in southern France show a culture of early humans who live with a deep sense of spirituality and reverence. The beautifully artistic paintings are renderings of animals and people in various poses and ceremonies that reveal a sense of deeply human life.

The authors ask, what does this mean? What is it to be human? What does the term "Homo sapiens" mean? A young scientist translates this as "human knowing" but suggests that a more apt term for our species is "human spiritual." As he has worked with the drawings and searched for the mysteries of this ancient culture, trying to infer how they lived and thought, he concludes that this culture expresses through their art the deepest need of humans to connect and to communicate. This is what distinguishes us from other species. We express ourselves through art, music, stories and leave "artificial" traces of our lives for future generations to discover.

As I looked at the art and listened to these stories, I reflected on the nature of modern education. If the most important part of being human is to connect through art and music and stories, why is our education geared toward the skills of material accumulation. We prepare our children to get into schools which will yield them the best jobs to create the most wealth so that their children can continue the cycle. In an age where arts education has been designated a frill or an extra, we have lost our connection with what it means to be human.

Ragazzi strives to complement the education of our children with this spiritual connection to music and to communication. We reach back in time to discover the art of the past and we stretch out to learn music of far-reaching cultures of our present day. Our singers connect to each other and find ways to express themselves through this music. We connect with our audiences by sharing what we discover. As we explore what it means to be fully human, we reconnect with cultures from ages long past.

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Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Family support for children and teens

2011-12-07T11:42:00.001-08:00

The Importance of Family Support

by Micaela Presti and the Palo Alto Council of PTAs

Family support refers to the ways that parents, siblings, and extended family

show love, encouragement, and comfort to each other. The Developmental

Asset survey of Palo Alto youth in 2010, reveals that while younger youth

generally experience family support, teenagers do so much less often: 89%

of our 5th graders reported family support, 84% of our 7th graders, but only

66% of our high school students reported the asset. So, why the big drop

off? Some of it is developmental. In achieving independence, kids don't

think they need the support from parents as much as from friends and push

us away.

Clay Roberts recently came and spoke to Palo Alto community members,

middle school teachers and parents about the developmental assets and how

we can build them in our youth. He spoke about the importance of "love

languages". To illustrate the point, he used the story of the husband who

gives his wife an appliance for her birthday. She was expecting jewelry. In

the husband's language, the appliance was a great idea because he knew she

loved to cook. In her language, well, she didn't find it romantic or

thoughtful. Robert's point was, we need to know how our partners and

children interpret our love language. While we may think we are

communicating support to our family members, it doesn't hurt to once in a

while to check to see that they are actually feeling it!

Support can be shown in many ways. When you hug or kiss your child, and

say "I love you," the support is pretty obvious. Less obvious ways of

showing support include just paying attention to them, listening to them and

taking an interest in what they are doing. Our teens are striving to develop

independence from us. It is hard for parents to not be able to interact in the

same ways with them. Teens often want to just talk and have you listen,

without giving any feedback or advice. It allows them to work through the

situation on their own.

In their book Parenting Teens with Love and Logic, Foster Cline, M.D. and

Jim Fay discuss the transition from parenting younger children—who

typically require guidance and firm limits—to parenting adolescents, who

benefit most from the freedom to make their own decisions within the

boundaries of safe, reasonable limits. According to Cline and Fay, effective

parenting in the teenage years requires clearly communicating expectations

and consequences while allowing youth to make their own decisions and

"own" the results…even if their choices are not the ones that we would have

preferred.

One of the most important things to realize about providing family support

to older children is that they need the love and support every bit as much as

younger children do, even if they claim that they don't. Although it can be

challenging to remain connected to preteens and teenagers, the benefits of

doing so are immense.

The activities below offer a starting point to help build and strengthen the

asset of family support.

* Make family rules together, and agree on rewards for following the

rules and consequences for breaking them.

* Try to eat at least one meal together every day, and set aside at least

one evening or weekend day for the family to spend together in a

pastime that everyone enjoys or finds valuable. Make the effort to

maintain these traditions and rituals even if your children complain

about them when they're older.

* Be sure to recognize your children's unique talents and encourage

their interests, even when they don't match yours. For example, if

they're interested in animation, check to see if there's a convention or

film festival in your region that you can attend together.

* Look your children in the eyes when you talk to them, and give them

all of your attention in conversation.

* Be empathetic about their struggles and concerns—no matter how

silly or trivial their problems seem to you, they are significant to your

children.

* Praise your children for doing a good job and point out when they're

being helpful.

* At least once a day, try to express that you appreciate and care about

your children.

* Be affectionate, but respect their space; older children especially may

be uncomfortable about displays of affection in front of non-family

members.

This article was adapted from Project Cornerstone and Bainbridge

Community News.

--
Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Ragazzi December Concert Notes

2011-11-23T14:49:00.001-08:00

CHRISTMAS CLASSICS

A Millenium of Song

Join Ragazzi December 3, 4, 11

See ragazzi.org for concert details

Program Notes Sarah Wannamaker

Biebl's (1906-2001) Ave Maria combines the traditional text with excerpts from the Angelus, a devotional book focusing on the Incarnation. Although the texts are ancient, the musical language is modern: full, lush, modern chords enriched by the presentation of multi-voiced harmonies. Biebl particularly exploits the texture of the piece by writing for different combinations of voices, presenting a single line of chant, a 4-part chorus, and a dual-choir conversation.

The chant, Of the Father's Love Begotten is a combination of medieval text and music – it is one of the oldest hymns still in use. The fourth century text presents a tale of redemption for humankind, using the ethereal music of chant to link ancient prophecies with the Christmas story.

Like the Biebl, O Beata Trinitas, by Jacob Handl (1550-1591) presents a common liturgical text, this time written for double choir. This is not an

overt Christmas carol, but a glorification of the Trinity. This piece was written in the late Renaissance, when composers of choral music were just starting to use chords, as opposed to layered chant lines. It's an example of the Renaissance penchant of writing for double choir. "Cori spezzati" was popularized in Venice, where the cathedral choirs sang in alternation from opposing balconies in St. Mark's cathedral.

Peter Warlock (1894-1930) was an English musician and critic who reflected a full twentieth-century palette of influence: counterpoint, salon style (and saloon style), poetry, historical genres, and dance. His music reveals his own personality of bohemian unrest, eccentricity, and sly humor (even his chosen pseudonym, "Warlock," has wry connotations). Full harmonic color and lively syncopation characterize the Three Carols, which present three views of Christmas: a jaunty shepherd's tune, a lullaby, and a folk song.

Laudamus Te is an excerpt from Vivaldi's (1678-1741) setting of the Gloria - composed for the choir at a girl's orphanage in Venice. The imitative passages, nimble scales, and intertwining melodic lines require a great deal of vocal agility to convey a light-hearted, dancing song of praise. This Baroque piece stands in contrast with Mozart's (1756-1791) setting of the same text, also for two treble parts. Mozart's interpretation reflects the Classical aesthetic of genteel gracefulness and courtly refinement.

César Franck (1822-1890) was a French organist credited with reviving a formal musical tradition in response to frivolous post-Revolution trends. Franck's setting is for tenor, harp, cello, and organ; today's version is one of many variations on Franck's original. The text for Panis Angelicus, penned by St. Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi, conveys the mystical relationship between humanity and heaven, and is musically embodied in the sustained melodic lines and gentle accompaniment.

Little is known about Vierdanck (c. 1605-1646), a composer of the Dresden court, but his music demonstrates the gracefulness and flexibility of Baroque music. Most of all, Lo, I Bring Tidings (Christmas Concerto) exemplifies the conversational style of the Baroque. Instead of a long melodic line, small melodic gestures bounce between the two voice parts and violins. This piece also plays with rhythm, alternating duple and triple meters. The text is primarily sung by the Concert Group, with the Apprentices joining in to emphasize the exclamations, "Glory to God" and "Alleluia".

Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) was a Hungarian musician who strove to change the way music fit into society; in 1966, he wrote "mankind will live happier when it has learned to live with music more worthily. Whoever works to promote this end, in one way or another, has not lived in vain." The Dance of the Shepherds reflects Kodaly's two musical crusades – first to preserve the folk music tradition and second to write truly engaging music for children. The carol captures the unfolding of the Christmas story from the viewpoint of slightly confused shepherds who quickly join in the excitement of a journey to see the baby Jesus.

Pueri concinite by Johann Herbeck (1831-1877) was premiered in the Imperial Chapel in Venice on Christmas Day in 1868. This song of praise features a tenor soloist supported by a full choir, singing a stanza from the 14th-century hymn, Resonet in laudibus.

The setting of O Come, All Ye Faithful, by David Willcocks (b. 1919) is a popular choral interpretation of the hymn. This setting is now part of the core repertoire for the King's College Festival of Lessons and Carols in Cambridge, featuring both an added descant and a new harmonization.

Both Ave Maria and O Little Town of Bethlehem present a melody superimposed over Bach's Prelude 1 from the Well-Tempered Clavier (1722) – demonstrating the flexibility and potential of Bach's original work. Both present a surprisingly romantic interpretation of this iconic Baroque work.

The carol, We Three Kings, focuses on the magi. There is one verse reserved for each king's gift, which is a symbolic reference to larger themes of Christianity: gold symbolizes royalty, frankincense refers to worship, and myrrh foreshadows the death of Christ. The expressive and reflective solo verses juxtaposed with the more playful and upbeat refrain reflect the duality of excitement and somberness associated with the full Christ-story.

Venite Adoramus is another traditional carol, mixing English text with a Latin refrain. The lilting melody dances through another retelling of the Christmas story - celebrating the joys of Christmas - reveling in the story, family, angels, snow, and a renewed chance to bring the peace of heaven to humanity on earth.

--
Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

What are they THINKING when they choose those songs?

2011-11-16T11:50:00.001-08:00

What are they THINKING?

Why Ragazzi directors choose the music they do

We seek to teach many things through our music, but the most important thing is to teach the love of music, even music that might require repeated exposure to understand and appreciate.

A question that emerged from Ragazzi's satisfaction survey concerned choice of repertoire. Parents are curious why we choose what we choose. To address this, I will explain my process for repertoire choices, which, I believe reflects the process used by Ragazzi directors.

In school, we learn about the great writers of the world. Every child at some point in his career learns about Shakespeare, but we no longer teach the great musicians of the world. We hear that music is good training, but most of us don't pursue it as an intellectual challenge. One path to great music - music that will stimulate us and move us - is to find great texts from great literature, verse and scripture. So, the first decision we make is to choose music that introduces the boys to outstanding texts that reflect the rich heritage of Western music.

Next, we begin to think about our groups and what their needs are. We think about educational goals: what vocal technique (breathing, vowel formation) will this piece address? What level of challenge does this group need, how difficult should the music be? What is the variety of human emotions that are being explored in the various pieces? What musical literacy challenges are in the music (difficult intervals, harmonies, rhythms)? What variety is offered to entertain the audience?

Ragazzi is dedicated to educating our young boys in the great choral works of our society. However, we expand our focus from Western culture to include world music, popular songs and even jazz. (Note that the vocal technique learned from Ragazzi's classical training prepares singers to sing popular music, but it doesn't work the other way around.)

Sometimes a concert program's repertoire is designed around a single song. We have designed programs around collaborations with other arts organizations, such as last year's bell choir. One year we brought in a Native American composer who went on school visits with us to draw audiences for a concert where we used puppets! We celebrated our 15^th anniversary with a video installation at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. We once programmed around a literary reference, bringing in a reader for Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales. While we have traditionally done a Christmas theme in December, we have explored traditions of other groups at other times of the year. In June 2009, for example, we performed a concert of Jewish music based on poetry of children imprisoned in Terezin by the Nazis, as well as Jewish sacred music.

If you ask the boys what their favorite music is, you might be surprised. Last week a boy commented to me, "I don't know… I just prefer to sing in foreign languages." Or, "Please, can we sing the Janequin Chant des Oiseaux," (a French Renaissance chanson). If you think they like "upbeat" music best, what about the requests I hear for Brahms's lullaby-like O Schöne Nacht?

As I hear rumors of more school music programs giving in to the Glee aesthetic, I am so glad that Ragazzi still values the great music of the world in all its wonderful variety.

--
Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Vocal Health and Beyond

2011-11-03T13:39:00.001-07:00

It has become urgent to address the issue of poor vocal health. In the last two auditions, 10 boys showed up with hoarse voices. When I volunteered in a 4^th grade classroom, two girls sounded like their voices were trashed. Three boys in Concert Group of Ragazzi are having issues with hoarseness. People no longer even hear when voices are damaged because this is so common.

The following is from a slide presentation about vocal health and young singers.

Slide 1	Here is a picture of a healthy larynx with cartilage, muscle and mucous membrane. The vocal folds must vibrate 440 times per second to produce the pitch "a" above middle c. To produce a pitch an octave higher, they will vibrate 880 times per second. Every breath we take passes by the vocal cords as air is inhaled into the lungs.
Slide 2	When the voice is stressed, it is covered with swollen tissue and blood vessels. There are no pain receptors in the larynx, so the only indication of a problem is that the voice will sound hoarse. If the voice isn't rested, callouses can develop on the cords which can be a permanent or serious problem.
Slide 3	Vocal cords can be damaged by acid reflux, allergies, the drying effects of antihistamines, yelling or talking loudly and dehydration
Slide 4	There was a time when children were told not to yell, but now there is a high tolerance for loud talking. I hear children yelling at their parents in ways that would have shocked my parents. When music is played loudly and people try to talk over it, this stresses the voice. Often if you come home from a night at a club, you will notice some laryngitis the next day. *Sports coaches demand yelling to show support for the team. People are told to yell louder and louder and shamed if they refrain from this.
Slide 5	The first task is to recognize that damage has occurred by hearing hoarseness as something abnormal. Figure out the cause. Be willing to get the help needed.
Slide 6	Solo singing is an advanced form of vocal athleticism.
Slide 7
Slide 8	This lists how soloists are chosen by audition and what qualities directors look for.
Slide 9
Slide 10
Slide 11
Slide 12

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Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Ragazzi and Stress

2011-10-20T12:22:00.001-07:00

Boys' Daily Stresses and Ragazzi

--A Perspective from members of the YME

One of the challenges that many Ragazzi boys face as they mature is stress from keeping very busy schedules while maintaining their academic standards. Especially at the CGA, CG, and YME levels, boys' parents sometimes wonder if Ragazzi increases their boys' stress. One question the directors sometimes hear from parents is "Should my boy continue with his Ragazzi commitment given his busy schedule?" To help answer this question and others about Ragazzi's relationship to the stress in boys' lives, I asked some experienced YME guys how sticking with Ragazzi has benefitted them.

1) Have you ever been super stressed and wanted to quit Ragazzi because of it?

"Yes. But I remind myself every time of the amazing music that is unique to Ragazzi."

"I have always seen Ragazzi as a stress reliever instead of a stress adder. After a tough day at school or an exceptionally hard water-polo practice, I would always look to Ragazzi as a place for emotional release instead of an extra burden."

"Yes, multiple times. When I was younger the theory really stressed me out. Especially in high school, however, with so many tests and activities I have felt serious stress to leave because it is such a huge time commitment."

"Yes, it was because I struggled with theory. Ironic, right?"

These answers show that even though there is time committed to Ragazzi, boys find a way to stay committed.

2) So, what is it about Ragazzi that keeps you coming back?

"The music and the people. I am the only Ragazzi guy who goes to my high school, and I've made some pretty great friends that I don't want to let go of. High school music is nothing compared to the complex harmonies and rhythms that we do all the time in Ragazzi. It lets me express my full musical capabilities (not to sound cheesy)"

"The companionship and camaraderie with the other members is unequal to any other relationships that I have ever had because not only have we grown up together, but we have a common love for choral music. Also, the feeling of relief and satisfaction after finally fixing a phrase after countless hours of repetition kept me coming back for more."

Your boys' directors do as much as we can to help boys who are stressed to remain in Ragazzi. In the past, we have utilized many methods for helping boys succeed in their other activities while maintaining their commitment to Ragazzi. We have paired younger boys with older boys who have gone through stressful schedules to help them cope with it; we have given our boys excused absences if they have a huge academic commitment such as studying for finals or taking the SAT's; and we have discussed time management skills with boys. In addition, we try very diligently to schedule challenging memory assignments toward the beginning of the semester so that boys don't feel overloaded when they have to study for tests and the end of the semester.

3) What help have you received from your directors?

"Directors being understanding and reasonable has helped especially as a high school student. I have nearly zero free time during the week and 3 hours a week is actually a huge commitment. For example, in the winter I play soccer and practice doesn't end until 6 really so I try to leave early from that but I always end up late to rehearsal nearly all winter. The directors have noticed this but haven't said anything because they know once I get to rehearsal I am focused and put everything I have left into the music. Communication is key as well as working hard during rehearsal making up for any time lost."

"Directors have been relatively flexible with conflicts. I've been allowed to leave early for other rehearsals during the final week of operas, school shows, etc."

All of these guys have developed very strong senses of personal responsibility as a result of being in Ragazzi. Since they have to balance their academics and extra-curricular commitments with the Ragazzi schedule, they need to think ahead about potential conflicts and let their directors know about them.

4) Has growing up in Ragazzi helped you to develop personal responsibility?

"I wouldn't be half as responsible as I am now if I hadn't been in Ragazzi. The rehearsals enforce great rules and organizing tools that are helpful in daily life."

"Yes. I sit down to look at my rehearsal schedule every season for all of my production companies/groups. It's great training for when I have my career as a performer"

"I am most definitely gaining a greater sense of responsibility. Not only am I responsible for showing up to rehearsals and concert call times on time, but I must have my music memorized and ready to sing. Although at times it is difficult to balance my busy schedule with Ragazzi, through the skills of responsibility and organization I have found a way to do all my other activities while being committed to Ragazzi."

"Absolutely. Ragazzi has shaped me into the person I am today. It has had a huge impact on my life and changed me into a more responsible adult and given me greater common sense and ability to get things done. It has taught me to focus, behave, and work hard. The leadership roles I held in Ragazzi and just being a member have prepared me for all the leadership roles I hold today outside of Ragazzi."

If you have a boy who is stressed and questioning if he can continue to maintain the Ragazzi commitment, I hope that you take into consideration these powerful statements from experienced guys who have been through it. They all expressed a desire to quit at one point in their development, and they all share a common understanding that their choice to continue with Ragazzi has made them strong, responsible young men who are continually balancing all aspects of their lives and has allowed them to develop strong friendships here that they don't have elsewhere. We couldn't be prouder!

--Jennifer Cowgill

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Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Music and Verbal Skills

2011-10-11T09:44:00.001-07:00

October 4, 2011 SF Opera Twitter feed, Courtesy Rob Wilen

Music Training Enhances Children's Verbal Intelligence

Canadian researchers report the verbal intelligence of 4- to 6-year-olds rises after only one month of musical training Tom Jacobs1 Comment and 275 ReactionsPRINTSHARE

The verbal intelligence of 4- to 6-year-olds rises after only one month of musical training. (Digital Vision)

A just-published study from Canada suggests early music education stimulates a child's brain, leading to improved performance in an entirely different arena – verbal intelligence.

"These results are dramatic not only because they clearly connect cognitive improvement to musical training, but also because the improvements in language and attention are found in completely different domains than the one used for training," said York University psychologist Ellen Bialystok, one of the paper's co-authors. "This has enormous implications for development and education."

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, was conducted at York University by psychologist Sylvain Moreno, who is now with Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute. It focused on 48 children between the ages of 4 and 6, who took part in one of two computerized training programs Moreno designed.

Half participated in a music program, which "included training in rhythm, pitch, melody, voice and basic musical concepts," the researchers write. The other 24 took part in a visual-arts program, which "emphasized the development of visuo-spatial skills relating to concepts such as shape, color, line, dimension, and perspective."

All received their respective training one hour per day, five days per week for four weeks. The programs were projected onto a classroom wall and conducted in groups led by a teacher.

Before and after their four weeks of training, the children took a vocabulary test designed to measure verbal ability and a "block design" test to measure spatial intelligence. (In the latter, they were shown abstract designs and then asked to recreate them using colored blocks.) In addition, their level of brain activity was measured using an electroencephalograph.

The results showed, in Moreno's words, "a rapid transfer of cognitive benefits" for the music students. Specifically, those who received music training raised their scores the visual-intelligence test.

This increase in verbal intelligence was large and virtually across the board, with 90 percent of the 24 children showing improvement. What's more, using ERP analysis, the researchers measured changes in the kids' brain activity. This suggests the music training had a "transfer effect," enhancing their ability to understand words and explain their meaning.

The children who received the visual-art training did not fare as well: They showed no significant increase in either verbal or spatial skills.

"Preschool children are auditory experts with well-developed language abilities, but visuo-motor skills are less developed at this stage of life," the researchers note. "A longer or more intensive training period in visual art might significantly influence spatial intelligence."

Nevertheless, "Our findings represent the first demonstration of broad transfer of an educationally vital skill," the researchers write. "Training in music-listening skills transfers to verbal ability."

This finding echoes the results of a recent study of second-graders, which found the reading skills of those who received structured musical training were superior to those of their peers. Such research suggests cutting music education to concentrate on "the basics" is based on a misunderstanding of the way young minds work.

"Our findings demonstrate a causal relationship between music training and improvements in language and executive function," the researchers conclude, "supporting the possibility of a broad transfer between high-level cognitive abilities."

The famous Mozart effect was certainly overhyped and oversimplified, but it now appears that learning to appreciate complex music really can boost overall intelligence. Piping sonatas into your womb is unlikely to make a difference, but enrolling your kid in an early music-education class sounds like a very good idea.

Submitted by Rob Wilen, Ragazzi Board of Directors member

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Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Practice, Practice, Practice!

2011-09-24T13:26:00.001-07:00

Judy Collins is appearing in SF. Famous as a pop and folk singer, she was trained as a classical musician. Here is a quote from the Thursday September 22 SF Chronicle Pink Pages:

"Everything that I learned growing up musically has helped me to learn about discipline, about working and showing up and doing what has to be done. I don't think there is any doubt that all those years...after school helped me to know that's how you do it. You do it a day at a time, a little at a time....I think any training like that is valuable for teaching you how to survive..."

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Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Ragazzi Attendance Policy

2011-09-17T16:12:00.001-07:00

Demystifying the Ragazzi Attendance Policy

When I speak with most Ragazzi parents about their son's schedules, I hear stories about after school schedules that include boy scouts, sports practices, homework, instrument lessons, play practice, community service, chess club, karate or judo, and on top of it all—making it to every Ragazzi rehearsal and performance! Ragazzi's music directors know that parents struggle with learning the ins and outs the organization and understanding and meeting Ragazzi's attendance policy. I must admit that it took me quite a while to "get" the policy. I had so many questions... What constitutes a planned or excused absence? What happens if a boy gets sick after he has already missed his three allotted absences for the semester? Is he penalized for having the flu? Are three excused absences enough for one semester?

We live in a culture that expects kids to be well-rounded and community oriented along with being top students. School commitments and other important extra-curricular activities can conflict with Ragazzi rehearsals. Most parents know that Ragazzi's policy only allows three excused absences per semester and that all performances are mandatory. So, what do you do? My first response as a director is: "please don't run away scared!!!!" Instead, please take a look at the reasons for the policy and how directors will make every attempt to be flexible about it when we can.

The "Why" of the Attendance Policy

Choir is a "team sport." Much of our rehearsal time is focused on group development and learning. Can a football team practice without their quarterback, runningback, and defensive end? Nope. I asked my brother, who is a college football coach, this question and he laughed at me for implying that missing practice was even a possibility. Singing in a choir is just like playing on a team—the director (or coach) and the team simply need everyone there to have a fully successful practice and to make steady progress.

When a boy misses a rehearsal, parents often assure directors that their boy will work on his music outside of Ragazzi rehearsal. We thank you for the commitment and admirable willingness to work, but it misses one vital point: individual practice is not a substitute for group development. When your boy misses a rehearsal, it means that he is not present when directors share information about the nuances of the music such as blend, tuning, dynamics, articulation, expressiveness and communication. These are musical, artistic elements that need to be internalized uniformly throughout the group and they honestly cannot be communicated to the boys outside of rehearsal. Missed rehearsals result in having to repeat information and in extra rehearsal time devoted to sections of music that shouldn't need it. This is the core issue that Ragazzi's policy tries to address. However, we are aware that our expectations have to be realistic. This is why the policy also allows three excused absences.

Excused Absences/Illness/Unexcused Absences

An excused absence is anything that is planned ahead of time. This includes school concerts, trips, events, and other extra-curricular activities. Because your sons have so many activities in addition to Ragazzi, we urge parents look at their boys' schedules for the entire semester and let us know about planned absences as early as they can. This makes it easier to ask directors about an extra absence should special circumstances arise.

An unexcused absence is anything that director was not informed about or an absence exceeding the normal three excused. So, if a child misses a rehearsal, and we later discover that he was at a boy scouts party and we had not been informed, then we would deem it "unexcused."

Expect a phone call in the case of an unexcused absence.

If a boy is sick, we do not expect (or want!) him to be at Ragazzi rehearsals. We know that parents cannot control illness, and we definitely do not want sick boys sharing nasty colds. We simply ask that parents inform us of their boy's illness and absence as early as they can. A normal number of sick days doesn't count toward the three excused absences.

Flexibility in the Policy

We directors want to help each boy while maintaining the integrity and musical success of the chorus. We will always handle absences that may exceed the normal allotment on a case-by-case basis. So, while the attendance policy in the handbook is clear and concise, it also states that a boy "may be ineligible to perform in all or part of the next concert" depending on the director's assessment of the boy's progress and the specific musical needs of the pieces being performed on the upcoming concerts. This statement does not use the words "definitely will be ineligible to perform." We make decisions based on the each boy's situation and on the needs of the particular pieces of music being performed. It is always best to talk with your director about conflicts ahead of time so that directors can discuss with you how extra absences may affect your boy as well as the group. We will always try to be flexible.

What do we mean when we say that we will "try to be flexible?" Let's take a normal 11-year old boy whose school goes to outdoor education in the fall as an example. Perhaps in addition to missing two rehearsals for outdoor education, this boy's parents notice that he also has Ragazzi rehearsals conflicts with a band concert and the science fair. Being told about this well ahead of time would give me the best chance to plan around those absences - keeping in mind the needs of our rehearsal schedule and repertoire – and find a way to accommodate this boy's conflicts.

Because your directors try to be flexible, we also ask parents to be flexible, too. If your boy had already missed three rehearsals, for example, but you really wanted him to be available for a family dinner with your cousins from out of town, we might ask you to consider scheduling your dinner on a Tuesday or Thursday night.

Friendly Attendance Reminder Emails

This year, your director will email you a friendly reminder if your boy misses two rehearsals in a semester. This email will quote the attendance policy. We think that by sending out standard reminders, we will help you remember how many absences your son has accumulated and encourage you to look ahead. We hope that after receiving a reminder email, you'd look at his full schedule and pinpoint any additional conflicts. Say your son had one for a boy scouts activity and one for a dress rehearsal for the school play. In this situation, we would ask that you consider the importance of those two events and only skip a Ragazzi rehearsal for the event that absolutely could not be missed. If you found yourself in a situation where your son could not miss either event, we would then begin talking with you about how this extra absence could affect your son this particular semester and work towards a solution that could hopefully benefit everyone.

Questions?

Talk to your director about conflicts and possible solutions as soon as you know about them. It gives all of us the best chance to find a win-win solution. If you have further questions about the attendance policy, please feel free to ask any of us. We welcome parent questions and concerns.

--Jennifer Cowgill

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Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Music is Medicine

2011-08-26T19:06:00.001-07:00

Welcome backto the fall season of Ragazzi. I hope this TED talkgiven by Robert Grupta inspires you as it does me. He refers to the manfeatured in the movie, The Soloist, which you may have seen. The Ragazzi Sings blog has his full talk.

"...Music is medicine. Music changes us... becausemusic allows [us] to take thoughts…and shape them . And I understood that this was the very essence of art. This was the very reason why we made music, that we take something that exists within all of us, at our very fundamental core, our emotions, and through our artistic lens, through ourcreativity, we're able to shape those emotions into reality. And the reality of that expression reaches all of us, and moves us, inspires and unites us."

--------------------------------------------

Fulltranscript follows:

One day LosAngeles Times columnist Steve Lopez was walking along the streets of downtown Los Angeles when he heard beautiful music. And the source was a man, an African-American man, charming, rugged,homeless, playing a violin that only had two strings.

And I'mtelling a story that many of you know, because Steve's columns became the basisfor a book, which was turned into a movie, with Robert Downey Jr. acting as Steve Lopez, and Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, the Juilliard-trained double bassist whose promising career was cut short by a tragic affliction with paranoid schizophrenia.

Nathaniel dropped out of Juilliard, he suffered acomplete breakdown, and 30 years later he was living homeless on the streets of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.I encourage all of you to read Steve's book, or to watch the movie to understand not only the beautiful bond that formed between these two men, but how music helped shape that bond, and ultimately was instrumental, if you'll pardon the pun, in helping Nathaniel get off the streets.

I met Mr.Ayers in 2008, two years ago, at Walt Disney concert hall. He had just heard a performance of Beethoven's first and fourth symphonies, and came backstage and introduced himself. He was speaking in a very jovial and gregarious way about Yo-Yo Ma and Hillary Clinton, and how the Dodgers were never going to make the World Series, all because of the treacherous first violin passage work in the last movement in Beethoven's fourth symphony. And we got talking about music.And I got an email from Steve a few days later saying that Nathaniel was interested in a violin lesson with me.

Now, I should mention that Nathaniel refuses treatment because when he was treated it waswith shock therapy and Thorazine and handcuffs, and that scar has stayed with him for his entire life. But, as a result now, he is prone to these schizophrenic episodes. The worst of which can manifest themselves as him exploding, and then disappearing for days, wandering the streets of Skid Row,exposed to its horrors, with the torment of his own mind unleashed upon him.

And Nathaniel was in such a state of agitation when we started our first lesson at Walt Disney Concert Hall he had a kind of manic glint in his eyes, he was lost. And he was talking about invisible demons and smoke, and how someone was poisoning him in his sleep.

And I was afraid, not for myself, but I was afraid that I was going to lose him, that he was going to sink into one of his states, and that I would ruin his relationship with the violin if I started talking about scales and arpeggiosand other exciting forms of didactic violin pedagogy. (Laughter) So, I just started playing. And I played the first movement of the Beethoven violin concerto.

And as I played I understood that there was a profound change occurring in Nathaniel's eyes. It was as if he was in the grip of some invisible pharmaceutical, a chemical reaction, for which my playing the music was its catalyst. And Nathaniel's manic rage was transformed into understanding, a quiet curiosity,and grace. And in a miracle, he lifted his own violin, and he started playing,by ear, certain snippets of violin concertos which he then asked me to complete, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius. And we started talking about music, from Bach to Beethoven, and Brahms, Bruckner, all the B's, from Bartók,all the way up to Esa-Pekka Salonen.

And I understood that he not only had an encyclopedic knowledge of music, but he related to this music at a personal level. He spoke about it with the kind ofpassion and understanding that I share with my colleagues in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And through playing music and talking about music this man had transformed from the paranoid, disturbed man that had just come from walking the streets of downtown Los Angeles, to the charming, erudite, brilliant,Juilliard-trained musician.

Music is medicine. Music changes us. And for Nathaniel, music is sanity. Because music allows him to take his thoughts and delusions, and shape them through his imagination and his creativity into reality. And that is an escape from his tormented state. And I understood that this was the very essence of art. Thiswas the very reason why we made music, that we take something that exists within all of us, at our very fundamental core, our emotions, and through our artistic lens, through our creativity, we're able to shape those emotions into reality. And the reality of that expression reaches all of us, and moves us, inspires and unites us.

And for Nathaniel, music brought him back into a fold of friends. The redemptive powerof music brought him back into a family of musicians that understood him, thatrecognized his talents and respected him. And I will always make music with Nathaniel, whether we're at Walt Disney Concert Hall, or on Skid Row, becausehe reminds me why I became a musician. Thank you. (Applause)

To hear the talk visit this link: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/robert_gupta.html

--
Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

The power of music

2011-07-03T10:43:00.001-07:00

Recently the following video was posted on Choral Net. This is an audition for America's Got Talent by a choral group made up of homeless veterans.

After our tour to Cuba the boys and chaperons and I were moved by the power of the common language of music. Those of us who heard the boys speak at our "Animal Crackers" tour concert heard them marvel at how joyfully the Cuban choirs sang, even though the the singers were poor in material things. I saw our Ragazzi singers begin to sing with smiles and movement emulating the inspiring choirs they met and heard in Cuba.

As they were inspired by the music, the boys were able to overcome great obstacles such as jet lag, stifling heat, the tension of being together day in and day out. I saw boys helping other boys and encouraging each other. I saw boys sing with a joy and abandon that was new to them.

In this story of the choir of homeless vets, we can witness again the tremendous power of choral music-something we do together, something we can invest in to aspire to excellence - together, something that lifts us out of troubles and gives us new purpose in our lives.

Ragazzi parents are wise to invest their children's lives in this powerful work!

http://www.choralnet.org/view/288623

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Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

From a Ragazzi alum who was just accepted to Stanford and Yale

2011-06-04T10:35:00.001-07:00

Does Ragazzi have an impact on college admissions? Does it make you a better student, a better citizen, a more organized worker? Read this from a Ragazzi alum:

Dear Ms. Keil,

Watching my little brother's mini choir concert and seeing you there reminded me of my long, enriching experience at Ragazzi. I didn't really begin to comprehend the true benefits of Ragazzi until more recently. I realize now that while I was in the choir, I took for granted the tremendous music and camaraderie we all experienced under your leadership.

I grew up in Ragazzi. When I joined in first grade, I immediately began to learn the music theory, musicianship, and focus that so defines the choir. By the time I began taking piano lessons in second grade and then learning trombone in fourth grade, Ragazzi had provided me with a solid foundation of music theory and many other essential skills a musician must have. This gave me a huge jump-start in learning how to play my instruments. Today, as my high schools musician friends still sometimes struggle with theory, I think back to Ms. Panofsky and the whole Ragazzi staff and how thankful I am to you for getting me started on it early!

From participating in Ragazzi, I soon learned that I genuinely loved singing in a group; no matter what problems I had when I walked into rehearsal, eventually they would fizzle out of my conscience and I could immerse myself in the challenge and beauty of the music we were making together. This is the beautiful thing about Ragazzi. When everyone is locked in to each other and to the music, there are no limits to what can be created. Ragazzi is an intense team. Everyone has to put in individual work, bring it to rehearsal, and then work and compromise with others to make the final product. I am lucky to have been in this rich environment at an early age; the leadership skills and focus I acquired have helped me more and more as I interact with my peers today.

When it was time to apply to college this fall, I wrote a lot about my musical pursuits and experiences. The more I wrote about my more recent high school experiences playing trombone and piano, the more I realized just how much of a presence Ragazzi has in my musical life. Even though I left after my freshman year, I didn't know that Ragazzi would stay with me so firmly. I take for granted all the skills you taught me, ranging from how to breath properly to shaping a musical phrase to how to conduct. Many of them come more naturally to me now, because I used them so consistently from the age of seven to fifteen. Thanks to Ragazzi, I learned how to express myself and get closer to my friends through music, but also to find solace in it. Even the general level of discipline that I maintain in any endeavour developed completely during my stay at Ragazzi and I thank you for that!

But beyond the music and the focus, I also formed profound friendships in Ragazzi and had the opportunity to travel to several new places and open my mind. I always look forward to attending Ragazzi concerts and seeing how my friends have grown musically; for me, Ragazzi was as much about my friends as it was about the music. Singing together in a choir creates an incredible bond that is hard to come by in other activities.

As I look forward to attending college, I know Ragazzi has had a significant role in defining who I am today, and I am grateful for that! I hope you have a great time in Cuba (wow!), and I wish you all the luck in the future!

Sincerely,

Mark Fedronic

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Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Ragazzi: How we choose our music

2011-05-29T14:26:00.001-07:00

HOW DO RAGAZZI DIRECTORS CHOOSE MUSIC?

As educators, directors want to introduce our boys to the great works, much as an English literature teacher explores the great writers from our history. So, we try to give them a little Mozart, a little Bach, and a little Schubert over the course of their years with us. We also explore music of other cultures, often in the original languages, e.g. music from Africa, South America, the Middle East, Central Europe, Asia.

Added to this is the challenge of meeting educational goals at various age levels and to develop a healthy singing voice. Are we programming music that develops beautiful tone, vowel purity, breath control? What about the technical musical skills like rhythm, harmony? Are we learning pieces in lots of keys so as to take advantage of the boys' theory education? Are we providing appropriate challenges for their age levels? Is the music too easy? Too hard?

We also look at the variety of human emotions being expressed in the music. Are we singing music with great texts? Are we learning about ourselves as we explore different poets and songs?

And last but not least, we think about the concert program. Is there a range of tempos and moods so that our audiences will be engaged by the variety and enjoy hearing our concert?

As you can imagine, it is a juggling act to bring all these factors into play, but it is also a lot of fun as we explore music we love and get ready to introduce it - first to our boys and then to our audiences.

--
Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Singing helps Children achieve Academic Success

2011-05-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

In a study funded by Chorus America, the following was found to be true:

The 2009 study included a new component that explicitly examined the effects choral singing has on childhood development. The results show children who sing in choirs display many of the enhanced social skills found in adult singers, substantiating earlier conclusions that singing in childhood is likely to have an enormous influence on the choices individuals make later in life. Additionally, both parents and educators attribute a significant proportion of a child's academic success to singing in a choir.

Children who sing in choruses have academic success and valuable life skills.

Several of the study's major findings (A study funded by the National Endowment for the Arts) for young singers include:

There are approximately 10.1 million American children singing in choruses today.
The majority of parents surveyed believe multiple skills increased after their child joined a chorus. Seventy-one percent say their child has become more self-confident, 70% say their child's self-discipline has improved, and 69% state their child's memory skills have improved.
More than 80% of educators surveyed—across multiple academic disciplines—agree with parent assessments that choir participation can enhance numerous aspects of a child's social development and academic success. Educators also observe that children who sing are better participants in group activities, have better emotional expression, and exhibit better emotional management.
Ninety percent of educators believe singing in a choir can keep some students engaged in school who might otherwise be lost—this is particularly true of educators (94%) who describe the ethnicity of their schools as diverse.
Children who participate in a chorus get significantly better grades than children who have never sung in a choir. Forty-five percent of parents whose children sing state their child receives “all or mostly A's” in mathematics (vs. 38% of non-choir parents) and 54% get “all or mostly A's” in English and other language arts classes (vs. 43%).

--
Joyce Keil
Artistic Director
Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Made in America Program Notes

2011-03-24T14:30:00.001-07:00

Program Notes & Translations

The concert begins with a medley of African folk songs. The first, Ngiagula, is a plea to the doctor for help. Sivela Kwazulu is a worksong from the sugar cane fields - watch for the workers' reaction when their work is disrupted by the appearance of a poisonous snake among the cane. The third song, Tscho Tscho Loza, is so popular in South Africa that it is commonly (although mistakenly) thought to be the South African national anthem. The song actually originated as a traditional mining song among the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe, and is sung in a call-and-response style that eventually found its way into a common form of African-American spiritual, as you will hear later in the concert. O Freedom is a call for the end of Apartheid in South Africa.

The next selection is a folk tune, this time one from our own country. Shady Grove dates back to the eighteenth century, and is likely derived from the melody of an old English ballad. Numerous verses for this tune have been penned - some estimates include as many as three-hundred stanzas of additional content. Whereas some of the verses indicate that "Shady Grove" is a location, the majority of these verses depict the singer's love for a woman referred to by that epithet. Whatever the case may truly be, Shady Grove represents a source of solace for the singer.

Traveling north to Canada's remote Newfoundland province, we arrive at Cape St. Mary's - one of the most well-known locations on the island, largely for its immortalization in the song Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary's. In this arrangement we are taken off the Cape itself, sitting aboard the first boat as the initial strains of the melody reach toward the shore. These notes are harmonized as more boats join in the day's catch, until finally the cliff sides of the Cape itself echo back the initial melody. The piece ends as it began, on a unison note that returns our boat to the shore.

The theme of fishing continues with our first Cuban selection, Pescar Camaron, or Fishing for Shrimp - the tone, however, is in sharp contrast to our sleepy little cape, with rhythmic action that transforms the choir into part storyteller, part percussion section. According to the text, an American asks the Cuban child "What is this song you sing, and what does it mean?" The 'Little Cuban' replies, "Let's go to the river to fish for shrimp. It's just a song to sing, nothing more; it's a song for fishing, and when I sing it, it makes me happy."

We return again to the U.S.A. for a traditional spiritual. Shine On Me was one of the songs Ragazzi took on its last tour to Quebéc, and the boys have developed a familiarity with the text and style that really lets the piece... well, shine. The metaphor of the lighthouse shining is common among spiritual texts, as it represents a guide both for the body and for the soul. Although the piano imparts a sense of vertical harmonic structure with its strong, block-chord style, the focal point of the music is in the horizontal interweaving of three separate melody lines that join into a single statement by the end of the piece.

The theme for Smile was written in 1936 by none other than Charlie Chaplin for his movieModern Times. Lyrics were added by other songwriters in the 1950s. The song has been covered by artists such as Nat King Cole and Michael Jackson, and speaks to the heart of what it is to be a performer - that the show must always go on, no matter the hardship, even going so far as to say that something as seemingly-common as a smile can impart great value to one's entire life.

The next arrangement is a combination of two songs: Rare Earth's I Just Want To Celebrateand Three Dog Night's Celebrate (Dance to the Music). The piece follows the most common structure for a mash-up. One song is introduced by itself. Then the second tune is introduced on its own. Finally, the two songs are sung simultaneously. Of course, no celebration would be complete without a little dancing...

We circle back to African-American spirituals with Get on Board This Train, featuring a sound effects section ("clickety clack, clickety clack, hear that train comin' down the track"). The "gospel train is comin'!" in this blend of two traditional spirituals, Get On Board, Little Children and This Train.

The text of Amor De Mi Alma draws from a 16^th century Spanish poem: "I was born to love only you; my soul has formed you to its measure; I want you as a garment for my soul. Your very image is written on my soul; such indescribable intimacy I hide even from you. All that I have, I owe to you; for you I was born, for you I live, for you I must die, and for you I give my last breath."

As with most African-American spirituals, I'm a Rollin' has a double meaning. In its literal sense, it describes the hardship of life and invokes the community of brotherhood for spiritual salvation. In a deeper context, the text is a plea for the singers' community to aid in the struggle against these hardships. What is on the surface an evangelical invocation is actually a call for revolution, one which grows increasingly more fervent as the song approaches its climax.

The next selection is perhaps one of the most recognizable of American folk tunes.Shenandoah was first printed in 1882, but dates from before the American Civil War. The song likely originated as the story of a roving trader in love with the daughter of a Native American chief. It soon grew into a nostalgic remembrance of home for Civil War soldiers. The Shenandoah area was a center for manufacturing parts for wagons heading west. Lyrics were undoubtedly added to the song over time by the millions who heeded to call to go West.

El Paisanito is derived from the word 'paisano', meaning 'countryman'. In this case, the diminutive form is used, perhaps to indicate a poor social status. The text describes the song of the paisanito, sitting under a tree and plaintively recalling his love. He complains of his misfortune, and entreats his love to tell him if she loves him and return to his side.

Down In The Valley is another beautiful American folk tune, possibly with roots in England. It is also known by the title "Birmingham Jail" due to an additional verse that goes: "Write me a letter, send it by mail; send it in care of the Birmingham jail". It is likely that the song gained popularity among prisoners at Birmingham jail, as the song's message of longing for loved ones would have been especially poignant.

The next two songs draw from the wealth of American popular music, beginning with the doo-wop classic Come Go With Me and continuing with a medley of Ray Charles songs (Hallelujah I Love Her So, Georgia On My Mind, and What'd I Say). They represent American music's ability to incorporate folk traditions from a variety of countries in order to form fusion styles such as doo-wop, blues, and jazz.

The full choir reassembles for Juramento, meaning 'Oath'. The poem translates: "If love makes you feel deep pain and condemns you to live in misery, I give you this, my love, for your love: the blood boiling in my veins. If the supplier of these mystical troubles forces a man to drag long chains, I swear to drag by the black and endless seas of my sorrows."

Guantanamera refers to a woman from Guantanamo, the southeastern-most region of the island of Cuba. 'Guajira' means a peasant-woman, thus the refrain refers to a peasant woman from Guantanamo, asking for liberty for the people. The lyrics continue: "I am an honest man from where the palm tree grows; and before I die, I want to release my soul's poetry. My verse is of pale green and of flaming crimson; my verse is as a wounded stag that seeks sanctuary in the woods. I know of one profound sorrow among the nameless tragedies: the slavery of human beings is the great tragedy of the world! With the humble of the earth I want to cast my lot; a mountain stream means more to me than the ocean."

In Canada, the indigenous population is known collectively as the First Nations. From the Mi'kmaq people of Canada's Atlantic provinces, the Mi'kmaq Honour Song is an invocation and celebration of the Creator. This song weaves a vocal chant (in no particular language) among the sounds of nature, including the whisper of the wind, the cry of the loon, other bird calls, an owl, a chipmunk, and a wolf.

A Swahili song, Ni Jina Gani, is in the style of a "pambio," used at special gatherings such as weddings or funerals. Composed in the Kwaya music tradition of Tanzania, it features a Swahili call and response, a style often echoed in African-American music.

Toto's Africa brings us full circle – maybe full spiral: a U.S. rock band's song about Africa in a quintessentially American genre with deep roots in African music. Inspired by the droughts in Africa in the early 80s, the band at one point didn't think the song was good enough; Africa was almost left off the Toto IV recording. As one band member put it, "That tells you what can happen when we [think we can] pick our own singles!"

Program notes by Jesse Buddington

--
Joyce Keil

Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Care of the Singer's Voice

2011-03-07T13:43:00.001-08:00

Care of your voice.

As a singer, your instrument is your body. It’s obvious that your overall health can affect your voice, but the reverse can be true, too. At this time in our society, we are encouraged to show excitement by yelling loudly. Have you heard a coach or a cheerleader respond to a crowd: “I can’t hear you” and then everyone shouts louder and louder. The number of children, especially boys, who have damaged vocal cords is growing at a rapid pace. Here is Kathy Morey’s experience as a voice teacher:

“… it's troubling how many of [my students] show signs of vocal abuse from a young age. They almost all report that they yell a lot at sports practices and on the playground at school and at P.E. Some people outgrow this as adults and others develop a permanent ‘raspy’ tone in their speaking voices. Needless to say, one can’t sing with a damaged voice. Swollen vocal cords can contribute to other health problems such as colds.”

There are no pain receptors in our vocal tract, so the only way you can know that you have damaged your voices is when we hear breathiness in your sound. Breathiness is a sign of air escaping between swollen vocal cords which, due to inflammation, are unable to fully close and open to produce pitch. If the inflammation is allowed to continue, then boys will develop nodules – little calluses on the vocal cords.

From Pediatric Voice Disorders: Evaluation and Treatment, by Shannon M. Theis as found in The Asha Leade, Novemer 23, 2010,

Pediatric voice disorders typically have been blamed on vocally "abusive" behaviors, and many practitioners have tended not to provide intervention because they believed that children would "grow out of it." However, changes in pitch, loudness, and overall vocal quality tend to interfere with communicative abilities. Recently, research has focused on pediatric voice disorders and the effects of a voice disorder on a child's life. It has been reported that children and adolescents felt that their voice disorders resulted in negative attention and limited their participation in activities (Connor, Cohen, Theis, Thibeault, Heatley, & Bless, 2008)….Vocal fold nodules are one of the most common forms of pediatric dysphonia (Maddern, Campbell, & Stool, 1991) and are considered inflammatory. Studies have estimated that the incidence of vocal fold nodules as the cause of pediatric dysphonia ranges from 38% to 78% (Gray, Smith, & Schneider, 1996). Vocal fold nodules are defined as swelling (usually bilaterally) in the mid-membranous portions of the true vocal fold that interferes with glottic closure and vocal fold vibration (Heman-Ackah, Kelleher, & Sataloff, 2002). Vocal nodules impede the normal vibratory pattern of the vocal folds and present what we hear acoustically as hoarseness. Vocal nodules are the most common—but not the only—cause of pediatric dysphonia; therefore, a thorough assessment and diagnosis are essential in the evaluation and treatment of pediatric voice disorders. (For full article visit http://www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2010/101123/Pediatric-Voice-Disorders--Evaluation-and-Treatment.htm)

Some well-known singers have suffered from vocal nodules, famously Julie Andrews and often this requires surgery.

Interestingly, whispering is not a good solution. Since whispering is the passage of a great deal of air over the vocal cords, and is actually traumatic to the voice. Here is a link to a research study on whispering: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/health/08really.html?_r=1

As singers, we must protect our voices. There are healthy ways to make loud noises; ask your directors to show you how. Be sure not to allow others to talk you into damaging your voice and learn to speak more softly.

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

What is a parent to do?

2011-02-04T12:58:00.001-08:00

What is a parent to do?

Talking with my daughter this morning, she lamented how one minute she is urged to raise her child’s self-esteem by demanding more effort and more achievement and the next minute she is told that our children are over-stressed because too much is demanded of them. She referred to feeling as if she is reacting to “parenting advice du jour”.

The excerpts from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother that were recently printed in the Wall Street Journal and then went viral over the internet have sparked much discussion about parenting. Some people have raised vigorous objections to what has been seen as Amy Chua’s “mean” parenting style. She didn’t allow her children to participate in sleep-overs or have play dates. She insisted that they practice their music and study and get straight As.

Yet others make the observation that the following point from her book is well-taken:

“Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.”

When faced with the outcry claiming Amy Chua is an abusive parent because of the demands she placed upon her children, David Brooks in a New York Times article (January 17, 2011) makes a bold statement: “I have the opposite problem with Chua. I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.”

He counters that the truly hard learning occurs when we must work in groups and learn to get along with each other, while also learning to read social cues:

(referring to sleep-overs and other social situations) “…these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.”

“Yet mastering these arduous skills is at the very essence of achievement. Most people work in groups. We do this because groups are much more efficient at solving problems than individuals (swimmers are often motivated to have their best times as part of relay teams, not in individual events).”

He goes on, “…. Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together.”

“This skill set is not taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences. These are exactly the kinds of difficult experiences Chua shelters her children from by making them rush home to hit the homework table.”

Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker (January 31, 2011) addresses the issue of self-esteem in a different way. She notices that in the recent Programme for International Student Assessment (or PISA) tests, students from the United States ranked seventeenth in reading, twenty-third in science and thirty-first in math. “This ranking put American kids not just behind the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Singaporeans but also after the French, the Austrians, the Hungarians, the Slovenians, the Estonians, and the Poles.”

She claims that Americans have been taught to always encourage their kids and that this will increase their self- esteem. Researchers at the Brookings Institution compared the students’ assessments of their abilities with their scores. Nearly forty per cent of American eighth grade students agreed “I usually do well in mathematics” but only seven per cent of students got enough correct to qualify as having advanced ability in math.

So how do we reconcile these varying opinions on what is best for our children? Do we want them to have a realistic sense of their abilities? Do we want to push them to do their best?

Can parents find the balance between sensitivity and leadership? If these are not two mutually exclusive traits, then we will want to give our children opportunities to work in groups, to learn to get along with others. At the same time we will want to make sure that we are teaching our children the value of hard work, of self-discipline, of patience and persistence.

Certainly Ragazzi addresses the benefits of group learning. Singers in Ragazzi learn to work as a team, they learn to express their emotions, they learn to achieve as a group. We work to provide a place for your sons to build the intellectual skills and the character traits that lead to achievement. Boys work hard in Ragazzi, learning to manage their time and juggle the various demands on them. All of these things contribute to real, earned self-esteem and ultimately to a happy and productive life.

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

The Neuroscience of Music

2011-01-23T13:06:00.000-08:00

The Neuroscience Of Music

· By Jonah Lehrer

· January 19, 2011 |

Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form, devoid of language or explicit ideas. The stories it tells are all subtlety and subtext. And yet, even though music says little, it still manages to touch us deep, to tickle some universal nerves. When listening to our favorite songs, our body betrays all the symptoms of emotional arousal. The pupils in our eyes dilate, our pulse and blood pressure rise, the electrical conductance of our skin is lowered, and the cerebellum, a brain region associated with bodily movement, becomes strangely active. Blood is even re-directed to the muscles in our legs. (Some speculate that this is why we begin tapping our feet.) In other words, sound stirs us at our biological roots. As Schopenhauer wrote, “It is we ourselves who are tortured by the strings.”

We can now begin to understand where these feelings come from, why a mass of vibrating air hurtling through space can trigger such intense states of excitement. A brand new paper in Nature Neuroscience by a team of Montreal researchers marks an important step in revealing the precise underpinnings of “the potent pleasurable stimulus” that is music. Although the study involves plenty of fancy technology, including fMRI and ligand-based positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, the experiment itself was rather straightforward. After screening 217 individuals who responded to advertisements requesting people that experience “chills to instrumental music,” the scientists narrowed down the subject pool to ten. (These were the lucky few who most reliably got chills.) The scientists then asked the subjects to bring in their playlist of favorite songs – virtually every genre was represented, from techno to tango – and played them the music while their brain activity was monitored.

Because the scientists were combining methodologies (PET and fMRI) they were able to obtain an impressively precise portrait of music in the brain. The first thing they discovered (using ligand-based PET) is that music triggers the release of dopamine in both the dorsal and ventral striatum. This isn’t particularly surprising: these regions have long been associated with the response to pleasurable stimuli. It doesn’t matter if we’re having sex or snorting cocaine or listening to Kanye: These things fill us with bliss because they tickle these cells. Happiness begins here.

The more interesting finding emerged from a close study of the timing of this response, as the scientists looked to see what was happening in the seconds before the subjects got the chills. I won’t go into the precise neural correlates – let’s just say that you should thank your right NAcc the next time you listen to your favorite song – but want to instead focus on an interesting distinction observed in the experiment:

In essence, the scientists found that our favorite moments in the music were preceeded by a prolonged increase of activity in the caudate. They call this the “anticipatory phase” and argue that the purpose of this activity is to help us predict the arrival of our favorite part:

Immediately before the climax of emotional responses there was evidence for relatively greater dopamine activity in the caudate. This subregion of the striatum is interconnected with sensory, motor and associative regions of the brain and has been typically implicated in learning of stimulus-response associations and in mediating the reinforcing qualities of rewarding stimuli such as food.

In other words, the abstract pitches have become a primal reward cue, the cultural equivalent of a bell that makes us drool. Here is their summary:

The anticipatory phase, set off by temporal cues signaling that a potentially pleasurable auditory sequence is coming, can trigger expectations of euphoric emotional states and create a sense of wanting and reward prediction. This reward is entirely abstract and may involve such factors as suspended expectations and a sense of resolution. Indeed, composers and performers frequently take advantage of such phenomena, and manipulate emotional arousal by violating expectations in certain ways or by delaying the predicted outcome (for example, by inserting unexpected notes or slowing tempo) before the resolution to heighten the motivation for completion. The peak emotional response evoked by hearing the desired sequence would represent the consummatory or liking phase, representing fulfilled expectations and accurate reward prediction. We propose that each of these phases may involve dopamine release, but in different subcircuits of the striatum, which have different connectivity and functional roles.

The question, of course, is what all these dopamine neurons are up to. What aspects of music are they responding to? And why are they so active fifteen seconds before the acoustic climax? After all, we typically associate surges of dopamine with pleasure, with the processing of actual rewards. And yet, this cluster of cells in the caudate is most active when the chills have yet to arrive, when the melodic pattern is still unresolved.

One way to answer these questions is to zoom out, to look at the music and not the neuron. While music can often seem (at least to the outsider) like a labyrinth of intricate patterns – it’s art at its most mathematical – it turns out that the most important part of every song or symphony is when the patterns break down, when the sound becomes unpredictable. If the music is too obvious, it is annoyingly boring, like an alarm clock. (Numerous studies, after all, have demonstrated that dopamine neurons quickly adapt to predictable rewards. If we know what’s going to happen next, then we don’t get excited.) This is why composers introduce the tonic note in the beginning of the song and then studiously avoid it until the end. The longer we are denied the pattern we expect, the greater the emotional release when the pattern returns, safe and sound. That is when we get the chills.

To demonstrate this psychological principle, the musicologist Leonard Meyer, in his classic book Emotion and Meaning in Music (1956), analyzed the 5^th movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131. Meyer wanted to show how music is defined by its flirtation with – but not submission to – our expectations of order. To prove his point, Meyer dissected fifty measures of Beethoven’s masterpiece, showing how Beethoven begins with the clear statement of a rhythmic and harmonic pattern and then, in an intricate tonal dance, carefully avoids repeating it. What Beethoven does instead is suggest variations of the pattern. He is its evasive shadow. If E major is the tonic, Beethoven will play incomplete versions of the E major chord, always careful to avoid its straight expression. He wants to preserve an element of uncertainty in his music, making our brains beg for the one chord he refuses to give us. Beethoven saves that chord for the end.

According to Meyer, it is the suspenseful tension of music (arising out of our unfulfilled expectations) that is the source of the music’s feeling. While earlier theories of music focused on the way a noise can refer to the real world of images and experiences (its “connotative” meaning), Meyer argued that the emotions we find in music come from the unfolding events of the music itself. This “embodied meaning” arises from the patterns the symphony invokes and then ignores, from the ambiguity it creates inside its own form. “For the human mind,” Meyer writes, “such states of doubt and confusion are abhorrent. When confronted with them, the mind attempts to resolve them into clarity and certainty.” And so we wait, expectantly, for the resolution of E major, for Beethoven’s established pattern to be completed. This nervous anticipation, says Meyer, “is the whole raison d’etre of the passage, for its purpose is precisely to delay the cadence in the tonic.” The uncertainty makes the feeling – it is what triggers that surge of dopamine in the caudate, as we struggle to figure out what will happen next. And so our neurons search for the undulating order, trying to make sense of this flurry of pitches. We can predict some of the notes, but we can’t predict them all, and that is what keeps us listening, waiting expectantly for our reward, for the errant pattern to be completed. Music is a form whose meaning depends upon its violation.

Thank you to Nora Mote for passing this along!

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Chorus Effect in School

2011-01-13T22:43:00.000-08:00

By Ann Meier Baker
This past holiday season was filled with choral singing, when holiday concerts in schools, concert halls, places of worship, shopping malls were all in full swing — not to mention all the caroling and sing-alongs. This holiday season everybody was also talking about the singing in the popular television show “Glee.” I am one among the millions of people who tune in Tuesday nights.

But it’s not just “Glee” that is making choirs cool these days. The a cappella singing competition “The Sing-Off” on NBC is shining a light on the popularity of contemporary a cappella singing; choral flash mobs are all over YouTube and choral music is an important element in many of the most popular commercials on the air today.

In addition to choirs being featured front and center in the popular media, teachers across the country are reporting that the “ ‘Glee’ effect” is paying off for their own school choir programs. In a recent poll by the National Association for Music Education, music teachers reported a surge in the number of students who want to be involved in their schools’ choral groups and new ensembles are being formed to accommodate all the interest.

This is the first good news that school music programs have had in a long time and it couldn’t come soon enough. Since choirs, along with other arts programs, have been sacrificed during recent budget cuts, it’s especially good to see student enthusiasm for singing creating more demand that could influence school boards and other decision makers to keep singing in schools.

But being popular with students is not the best reason to support choral programs in schools. The value of singing for kids is both wide-ranging and well documented in research commissioned by Chorus America in 2009. According to both parents and educators who participated in the Chorus Impact Study, children who sing in choruses have more academic success and advanced social skills than children who don’t sing, and parents and educators attribute a significant part of a child’s academic success to singing in a choir.

Choruses are not the only activity most of these children are participating in, yet parents definitively date their child’s improvements in a variety of areas to their joining a choral group. That, and the breadth of benefits described by both parents and educators, argues for a unique “choir effect,” one that isn’t simply replicated by participation in other activities, according to the researchers.

When it comes to grades, children who participate in a chorus do significantly better than children who have never sung in a choir. Forty-five percent of parents surveyed whose children sing state their child receives “all or mostly A’s” in mathematics (versus 38 percent of nonchoir parents) and 54 percent get “all or mostly A’s” in English and other language arts classes (versus 43 percent).

And there’s more. An overwhelming number of parents surveyed in the study reported that multiple skills increased after their child joined a chorus, from more self-confidence and self-discipline, to improvements in memory skills.

Beyond academics, educators and parents surveyed report that children who sing are better participants in group activities, and that singing in a choir can keep some students engaged in school who might otherwise be lost, which resonates with some of the story lines in “Glee” about bridging student divides at the show’s McKinley High School.

The evidence that the “choir effect” provides benefits that can produce a smart and engaged citizenry is compelling. The next time tough school budget choices are made, enlighten your school leaders. Let’s not give in to the Sue Sylvesters of the world.

Ann Meier Baker is president and CEO of Chorus America.

Why Ragazzi Matters!

2010-12-20T15:05:00.000-08:00

Ragazzi has auditions January 8. Phone 650-342-8785 to schedule an appointment. See the following for the reminders as to why this is such a good thing for boys!

Why Ragazzi Matters

Ragazzi is all about music education

· Ragazzi has more than 20 years experience taking untrained boys from all walks of life and leading them to be good singers, good musicians, good students and good citizens. We admit all boys with promise, without regard to ability to pay – our scholarship program is essential.

· Ragazzi is a complete program – vocal training, ensemble singing, music theory, movement and showmanship.

· Choral singing trains children’s brains to truly multitask – they have to sing the right words and pitches, in the right rhythm and tempo, all while watching the conductor for cues and listening to their neighbors for blend.

· Parents of singers report their children have good memory, good homework habits, and high levels of creativity. Children who sing in choruses get significantly better grades.

· Parents also report their children are better team players and have more advanced social skills.

· An overwhelming majority of these parents date improvements in these areas to when their child joined a chorus, and also say their child’s ability to manage his/her emotions and read the emotions of others improved after they became choral singers.

· Educators agree that singing in a chorus can help improve overall academic performance, help instill self-discipline and punctuality, and more.

(Source: http://www.chorusamerica.org/documents/Impact09/ImpactStudy09_ExecSum.pdf)

Ragazzi is all about boys

· The artistry that boy singers are capable of is truly astonishing. As young musicians, they don’t have the experience of adults, and yet they are fully capable of skilled, nuanced, and deeply moving performances.

· Boys’ voices are unique – there is no vocal sound quite like that of an accomplished boy soprano. Before a boy’s voice changes to tenor, baritone or bass, the quality of his voice becomes increasingly different from a girl’s. As boys mature, but before the voice fully drops, a rich tone develops that is unique to boys. This period of high vocal range and unique color is one reason why so many vocal traditions throughout the world embrace boy choruses and soloists.

· In a boys chorus, where they are with their peers, boys will work and compete toward the same goals. Gender issues transform themselves from liabilities to strengths.

· Ragazzi is a safe place for boys to explore their capacity for Art.

Ragazzi is all about performance

· Ragazzi rocks! And folks, and jazzes, and pops, and... Our repertoire covers all of Western music, from medieval plainchant and Baroque fugues to the Beach Boys and Queen. But we don’t ignore other traditions—we also sing music from all over the world, in the original languages. Boys go home singing in Japanese, French, Yiddish, Latin, or all of the above!

· In addition to its own concerts and recitals, Ragazzi frequently performs with other top- notch Bay Area groups, including the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, Opera San Jose, West Bay Opera, Peninsula Symphony, Masterworks Chorale, and Stanford University Symphonic Chorus.

· Ragazzi tours internationally. Past destinations include Australia and New Zealand, Quebec and British Columbia, Spain and Portugal, the British Isles, Russia, Eastern Europe, Italy, and Japan. The chorus has also toured domestically to Minnesota, Oregon, Montana, and Arizona. Next up? Cuba, 2011!!!

· Ragazzi’s internationally respected co-founder, Joyce Keil, leads our experienced and capable faculty. All of our directors have years of experience as singers, conductors and educators. Even our newest faculty member, who got his start in formal music as a Ragazzi boy, has years of choral leadership experience!

· Ragazzi’s summer camp, for its upper chorus levels, is a fabulous experience for the boys. They spend ten days at a lovely campus in the hills above the Napa Valley, learning new repertoire and dance routines, advancing in the theory program, and cementing friendships and enjoying outdoor activities.

Ragazzi is all about outcomes

· Ragazzi offers our boys the chance to learn the art of singing in a supportive environment where they can hone performance skills, experience the joy of creating music and learn firsthand the value of leadership, teamwork, commitment, and
self-discipline.

· Ragazzi gives our boys a golden opportunity to find success. And from that success, a genuine sense of self-esteem; all the more resilient and valuable because it’s earned... the old-fashioned way.

· Our boys and grads find commonality and community anywhere and everywhere the universal language of music and singing is “spoken.”

Written by David Jones, Executive Director of Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Ragazzi's December Christmas Concerts

2010-11-23T12:33:00.001-08:00

Please join us Dec. 4, 5 or 12 to hear this wonderful concert of choral music enhanced by the professional Sonos Handbell Ensemble. Visit Ragazzi’s website for concert information: www.ragazzi.org.

Here are the program notes for the concert, prepared by Sarah Wannamaker

O Come Emmanuel offers both a musical and thematic beginning for the concert. The chant style is the earliest written style of music in the West; the smooth lines, small intervals, and undulating phrases capture the ethereal and timeless flow of chant. The text is for the Advent season – a verse to prepare the listener for the promises of Christmas.

The freedom of chant gives way to rhythmic playfulness in the next piece. The modern setting of Three Medieval Carols captures the spirit of medieval dances from which English carols originally evolved. Syncopation and playful duple-triple interplays complement the complexity of singers and bells dabbling in different meters. The text is a unique blend of Old English and Latin. An example – “Comfort my heart’s blindness, O puer optime, With all thy loving kindness, O princeps gloriae” – is difficult for the listener to interpret on first hearing – mixing the languages emphasizes the text as a sound and rhythmic element.

Masters In This Hall is a French carol which describes the singers traveling to Bethlehem to “seek a Lord who lies in manger low”. The simple verse-refrain format fits the folk song filled with the bucolic humbleness of shepherds, oxen, and “milk-white snow”. The different voice sections sing different parts of the story – all different voices in a group of travelers anxious to tell the next part of their story.

The Holly and The Ivy and I Wonder as I Wonder are both tunes which bridge the Christmas birth story with the crucifixion story. The Holly and the Ivy does this using a veiled, symbolic language: the holly bears the crown, the blossom, and the prickle. I Wonder as I Wonder is more forthcoming in the connection. This Appalachian tune tries to evoke a haunting musical representation of the words “as I wander out under the sky.”

In I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, California composer Kurt Erickson addresses the dichotomy of Christmas idealism found in traditional hymns (“of peace on earth, goodwill to men!”) compared to the everyday reality (“for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace”). Just as the text by Alfred Lord Tennyson is glossed with a new context, the traditional tune is presented and expanded upon with new melodies and surprising harmonies. The music relies heavily on fourths, mimicking the unique overtones of bells.

Similar in spirit to Masters in this Hall, Wassailing Song is a frolic of a tune about wassailing (the English version of door-to-door caroling). This is not a Christmas song reflecting on the nativity; it is a festive tune to celebrate the New Year. Wassail is both the spiced ale in the bowl as well as the toast – and this song describes a band of singers who are offering good cheer in exchange for a treat.

The text for Biebl’s Ave Maria is drawn from the traditional Ave Maria in addition to the Angelus, a devotional text focusing on the Incarnation. Although the texts are ancient, the musical language relies on full, lush, modern chords enriched by the presentation of multi-voiced harmonies. The texture alternates between a single line of chant, a 4-part chorus, and a dual-choir arrangement.

Like The Holly and the Ivy, I Saw Three Ships is an English tune with a symbolic text. The references are nebulous – with possible references to the three kings, the Holy Trinity, the three ideals of “faith, hope, and love”, or even (perhaps) the three ships of Columbus. This arrangement highlights the playful and lilting dance nature of the tune.

Dede Duson’s arrangement of From Heav’n Above is a stately and modern interpretation of a tune attributed to Martin Luther. The setting plays with rhythmic variation and meter changes while reflecting the various moods associated with each verse: the tidings of great joy, the virgin Mary, making space in the heart for the Christ child, and glory to God.

Ding-dong! Merrily on High is a 16^th century tune married to a 19^th century text about ringing the bells to celebrate Christmastide. The melismatic chorus “Gloria” indulges in the sound of the choir, and the verses talk about the excitement of both heavenly and earthly bells announcing Christmas. Carol of the Bells similarly celebrates the sounds of bells as carrying the message, “Christmas is here, carrying good cheer.” This choir accompanies itself in this piece – those without the melodies use their voice to imitate the bells.

The last three Christmas carols are traditional and well-known carols – 2 sacred and 1 secular take on the season. Each setting reveals a unique mood of Christmas. Silent Night is a lush, quiet lullaby, while O Come All Ye Faithful captures the reaction of heaven’s angels to the Christmas story. Finally, We Wish You a Merry Christmas ends the concert with a musical joke and all the best wishes for a happy new year.

We know that Christmas is one of many faith traditions represented today by our boys, families, and guests. Christmas music remains an integral and vital part of the Western music tradition, which remains the core of Ragazzi. In the Christmas story, we find messages of hope, family, celebration, peace, and music – elements universal to every tradition. We are glad that you joined us today and hope that the concert filled your spirit with warmth, celebration, peace, and music.

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Ragazzi tour preview

2010-11-20T09:33:00.000-08:00

Here is a short story about one of the choirs I heard during my trip to Cuba in January 2010. Ragazzi looks forward to working with them next June on our Cuban tour.

We entered a courtyard of the Museum Alejandro von Humboot. Two huge, perfectly preserved skeletons of dinosaurs, donated by Mexico in 2007, filled the yard. I heard some powerful, rich falsetto singing coming from upstairs. We were ushered up to the rehearsal of Sine Nomine, an eleven-voice professional all-male choir. Their conductor was Leonara Suarez and they were perfecting a program which the conductor wanted them to perform without her. The first piece was a beautiful Renaissance piece by Victoria with perfect 5ths that rang and with crescendos and phrasing that astonished. They sang the famous French chanson “Il est bel et bon bon” by Passereau and then a Hassler piece with strong clashing harmonies, incredible crescendos. It was in five parts, SSATB, and as they sang with long breathed phrases, they leaned into the dissonance before releasing it. They took it very slowly. The text is about how the singer has suffered (loving you) and it has cost him his life. The conductor corrects them: more feeling, more intimacy. I was in tears hearing the beauty of their singing. They gave me this piece.

They then sang a heart-wrenching “Danny Boy” and a great medley of Beatles and Queen music. All the rehearsing was done by memory by both singers and conductor. The conductor told me that they start each concert with musica antica and then sing all styles. She says “they sound like an SATB choir.” All rehearsing is done by memory, but I was hearing them right before a concert the following week. Expressive extremes. They breathed deeply through the nose.

Their English is better than ours because all the vowels are formed consciously and beautifully. They sang so beautifully, but their rehearsal room was divided only by wooden slats which did not protect them from the street noises, including loud honking horns. Somehow they were able to keep their focus. Each time they sang, it was full of feeling. This will be a wonderful group for Ragazzi to work with next June!

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Education or Inspiration

2010-11-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

Recently I attended a play that was supposed to be "ground-breaking" and awesome. But I was disappointed to see that it was instead an historical diatribe about a political point of view. I left early, bored and restless.

Later that weekend, I attended the West Bay Opera production of La Forza del Destino. It was a three and one half hour production, so I expected to find it difficult to sit for so long. Of course the presence of Ragazzi singers was an enticing incentive and I was looking forward to seeing and hearing them.

Imagine my surprise when at the end of the opera I found my eyes watering up. I had been moved to tears by the beauty of the story and the powerful acting and music.

This led to my thoughts about art and what we at Ragazzi are trying to do. Yes, we are educating boys in the mores of different historical times, languages and cultures. Yes, we are learning to sing with correct technique. And yes, we are learning to read music, an almost forgotten language.

But fundamentally we are making connections. We want to feel what people who sang Latin chants felt. We want to understand the impetus for the rhythms of the great Latino songs. We want to understand the mysterious chants of the cathedral. We want to learn how music in the Renaissance played with words and melodies and rhythms. and then we want to communicate that to you. We want to connect with you, to share with you.

At the end of a Ragazzi concert, we want you to feel happy, sad, moved, amazed; we want you to feel something. We don't want you to only think, "My, they must have worked hard on this music. As Jon Carroll, after attending a performance in the East Bay, wrote in his column in the San Francisco Chronicle November 4, "...the music was beautiful; I still felt a lump in my throat. That's real art, I think--when the emotional moment transcends the plot..."

To this end we are working to help the boys connect to the texts, even when they sing in foreign languages. We are exploring different ways to showing the feelings of the text through our faces and bodies. We are reaching out to you, our audience, and asking you to connect with us to other times and places and to share our journey of exploration and excitement. We want to inspire you to experience a moment of transcendence, even if for just an hour.

Teamwork, Self-Reliance and Happiness

2010-09-16T16:23:00.001-07:00

I have been reflecting on how Ragazzi contributes to the health and happiness of our boys and how this helps our society. I see Ragazzi building teamwork among our members and I see the boys responding with joy to music.

This summer it was my good fortune to immerse myself in the study of early American cultures. As we studied the ancient Native American cultures and then the world of the early Western pioneers, I was struck by a new insight. We have always, in our society, cherished the concept of self reliance but when we look at the reality of those early times we see the huge role that is played by community. People got together to build barns, to put up vegetables and fruit, to plow the fields, to educate their children. What was truly important was the way these early people worked together.

I also read in the New Yorker a fascinating article about happiness, healing and the role of the body. Starting with Norman Cousins, who in the 80’s wrote famously about beating disease by watching comedies, there has been increasing interest in how physical manifestations of happiness (laughter, smiling, up-beat movement) cause internal changes in the body. I saw this Wednesday night in our first rehearsal of the new season. When we took out a bouncy, happy song, the boys began to move rhythmically as they smiled broadly to the music. Music not only expresses feelings, it can also create feelings and as the research is beginning to show, good feelings have a salutary effect on our body.

So as we educate our boys, we celebrate the power of teamwork and community in raising responsible, self-reliant citizens. We celebrate the joy of making music in community and the healing benefits of happiness.

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Fax:650-570-6233

The power of music to save the world

2010-08-09T14:37:00.000-07:00

When I was a child imagining a career for myself, my father stressed to me that I had to do something which “helped people.” I wanted to be a writer or a singer but he didn’t think that was a good enough helping profession, so he encouraged me to go into psychology. In those days, psychology was focused on behaviorism, characterized by training rats. I got my Master’s degree and worked for Kaiser on psychotropic drugs, but I grew disenchanted; I longed to do what I loved.

When I had the opportunity to support myself, music jobs fell into my lap. With no formal training, somehow I found myself a choir director and a teacher. I have, over the years, tried to tell myself that I’m “helping people”, but was always unsure. I have constantly looked for reassurance that being an artist is a worthy profession.

I recently read an article by Dr. Karl Paulnack from his opening address to the Boston Convservatory parents in 2004 (reprinted in Music@Menlo 2010 Season Brochure). Highlights follow:

“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician….On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was...” Paulnack then tells of Olivier Messiaen, who was captured by the Nazis in 1940, and was fortunate to have a guard who gave him pencil and paper. From that terrible time in prison emerged one of his most profound musical compositions, the Quartet for the End of Time. “Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music?... in a place where people are focused only on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life…”

After referring to the way our nation turned to music after September 2001, Paulnack goes on to tell the story of a concert he gave that moved a WW II pilot to help him connect with his deepest emotional memories. “From these experiences, I have come to understand that… music is a basic need for human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.”
……..

“If we were a medical school and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two a.m. someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at eight p.m. someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft…”

“Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music, I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force, or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that is what we do. As in the concentration camp and on the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible live

So, it seems I am living by my father’s ideal. In fact, all of us involved with Ragazzi are “helping people:” our boys and those who are touched by our music.

A choral conductor's mulligan shot

2010-07-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

The editor of the California State journal for the American Choral Directors’ Association asked all committee chairs to write a “mulligan.” He defined that as the chance to take the shot over, or “what would you do differently if you had a second chance. Here’s what I wrote July 2010.

This is an invitation to be confessional, it seems to me.

If I had my life to live over, I would have studied music assiduously as a child. I would have insisted on piano lessons even when my parents couldn’t afford it. I would have used my babysitting money to pay for them. I would have had the courage to be a music major the first time around at Occidental College under Dr. Howard Swan. Instead, I sang in the Glee Club, took voice lessons and lurked around the music quad wishing I were part of the community. I allowed myself to be scared by the music majors’ tales of “horrible theory.”

If I could do it over, I might have recognized that I was a better “group musician” than soloist and not wasted so much time on private voice lessons and rigid practice two hours a day.

When I finally went back to school to Cal State Northridge and studied with Daniel Kessner and John Alexander, I discovered that music theory was not the big bugaboo I had expected. In fact, it was fun! I wish I had started harmonic dictation earlier, though. I remember being told, “All of you in this class want to be musicians, but I guarantee that most of you will not make it.” I assumed that I would be one of those to not “make it.” But I kept going. Once in a conducting class, Lawrence Christiansen gave us some little melodic bits to sing and I nailed them. He said (referring to me), “There’s someone in the class with an ear.” I was jublilant.

If I could do it over, I would have had more confidence. Everytime my choir grew, I was surprised that people wanted to sing with me. Every time I got a superior rating, I was amazed that our work was good enough. But I kept going. In the early years in LA, I had 6 jobs and drove all over the county to keep body and soul together.

Now that I have my wonderful Ragazzi chorus, I am grateful for the gift of music and for the joy of working with boys, where our team changes lives through the power of music and community.

Joyce Keil
Artistic Director
Ragazzi Boys Chorus
California State ACDA Boychoir Chair

June 20 concert

2010-06-13T20:12:00.000-07:00

Please join Ragazzi for our concert The Singing Heart. To give you a taste of what is to come, here are our program notes. At 4:30 we will have a pre-concert lecture to which you are also invited. This is a concert with "music about music." It includes some new and stunning repertoire as well as wonderful classics.

Program Notes for The Singing Heart
Ragazzi Boys Chorus
5 pm June 20 2010
St. Mark’s Church
600 Colorado Ave.
Palo Alto CA

The Poet Sings is a modern work inspired by Romantic thoughts. The text is particularly unusual: it is a composite consisting of the beginning of a poem by Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947) and finished by J. Randall Stroope, a contemporary composer. The imagery is based in nature (like
An die Nachtigall) and focused on a cosmic theme that reaches beyond humanity. The text, referencing Moriah, meaning ‘wind’, and Antares, a star, tells the listener that nature has a message for us and that we must learn to listen.

The Romantic period is about extremes in life and in music. Themes in Romantic texts address the cosmic, unknown Universe as easily as they revel in the subtleties of miniature moments.

An die Nachtigall by Robert Schumann is an example of the miniature side of Romanticism. The singer delights in the details of nature’s beauty silent listening to the nightingale’s song (‘not a [flower] petal murmurs’). The song is an invitation to a nightingale to stay and sing, and in today’s concert, it’s an invitation to the audience to stay and listen.

The Music of the Spheres by Bay Area composer and French Horn player Brian Holmes is one of Shakespeare’s well-known quotes about music; this one is excerpted from The Merchant of Venice. The title references the idea originating with ancient Greeks that the planets create cosmic music due to the ratios of their relative speeds, just as chords sound consonant due to the ratio of their relative frequencies. The piece explains that music is somehow a structural element for the universe and all beings therein – “such harmony is in immortal souls.”

Yo le Canto by David Brunner exemplifies the playful melodies and catchy rhythms of Venezuelan music. This pieces challenges singers with offbeat accents, syncopations, shifting meters, and independence from the piano accompaniment.

Like many gospel pieces, Shine On Me, arranged by Rollo Dilworth, has a text which can be interpreted on different levels. “Shine on me, Shine on me. I wonder if the lighthouse will shine on me” can be about searching for guidance on both a physical and spiritual level. The melodies fit into complex harmonies while a descant line ornaments and rises above the texture – all elements characteristic of the African-American improvisational style.

Joel Martinson’s setting of a text by Siegfried Sassoon, Everyone Sang, is a musical portrait of what happens when everyone collectively bursts into song. Note the text painting which portrays “freed birds winging wildly”, “horror melting away”, and “setting sun.” This song is musically unique because the piano accompaniment is so independent from the vocal lines.

The Singing Heart is set to a text by Danske Dandridge. Former Ragazzi conductor Julia Simon has created long lyric melodies to express the exultation of the singer who rejoices even in the darkest night. The Alleluia section, with its insistent rhythms and moving harmonies is reminiscent of Randall Thompson’s Alleluia. The piece is written and dedicated to the Young Mens Ensemble of Ragazzi Boys Chorus. This is a musical interpretation of “why a caged bird sings” – a reaction to the beauty of being alive.

When I Fall in Love by Victor Young became a part of American culture when recorded by Nat King Cole. This choral arrangement by Mulholland captures the lush crooning of the original while challenging the singers with tight jazz harmonies.

We Rise Again presents the theme of ‘life goes on’ using the imagery of nature and children. The song is set by Leon Dobinsky as a series of three verses followed by a refrain; each refrain becomes more complex until the final a cappella presentation. The layers of descants, gentle syncopations, and improvisational melodic riffs evoke a pop style.

Music Spread Thy Voice Around is a movement taken from G.F. Handel’s oratorio about the biblical King Solomon. The text emphasizes the importance of music for a king who had every earthly delight. The oratorio was written in part to draw comparison between Solomon and King George II, so emphasizing the importance of music in Solomon’s court helped Handel encourage his patron’s continued support of the arts... and of Handel’s salary.

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night opens with Duke Orsino’s thoughts, “If Music Be the Food of Love.” The duke has an unrequited love for a wealthy lady, and he decides to distract himself by languishing in all pleasures, in this case, the pleasure of music. David Dickau has created the setting we are singing in this concert.

Vive la Canadienne by Donald Patriquin is a concert setting of a Canadian folk tune praising Candian girls which can be traced to the 1800’s. The combination of an old French tune with new words is associated with a distinct air of patriotism from the Canadian perspective: the song served as the 19th century Canadian national anthem, was an official march for WWII soldier regiments, and was the basis for a 1924 operetta. Ragazzi learned this choral arrangement as an offering of goodwill for the upcoming Canadian tour.

15 year old sings opera

2010-05-27T19:07:00.001-07:00

In this remarkable video of Australian singer Mark Vincent, one can see the amazing musical achievements of which young people are capable. Ragazzi Young Men are also amazing singers and many of them sing opera too. Enjoy this stunning performance of Nessun Dorma.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnOczKJ6LDk

Music connects us

2010-05-16T11:36:00.001-07:00

Music connects us even if we are not all in the same room. In this amazing video, we see composer/conductor Eric Whitacre conduct a virtual choir in his awe-inspiring piece “Lux Arumque.” Ragazzi men and boys sang this piece several years ago. Eric Whitacre is a young composer whose music is a favorite of choral conductors around the world. For this project, he posted a video in which he conducted in silence and he then offered the sheet music as a free download to anyone willing to join in. As singers began posting their individual tracks, he called for ‘auditions’ for the soprano solo. Here is Eric Whitacre’s own description of the event:

“When I saw the finished video for the first time I actually teared up. The intimacy of all the faces, the sound of the singing, the obvious poetic symbolism about our shared humanity and our need to connect; all of it completely overwhelmed me. And it must be said that a lot of the credit for its beauty should go to Scottie Haines who spent untold hours editing and polishing the video. (BTW, Scottie and I have only met once in the ‘real world’, unlike 99% of the Virtual Choir, whom I’ve never ‘met’)…. Lastly, I’m hoping that this is just the beginning. My ultimate goal is to write an original piece for the Virtual Choir and have it receive it’s world premiere in cyber-space, hundreds (maybe thousands) of people singing alone, together.”

To see the “concert”, go to this Youtube link (you can select it and copy it and put it into your browser):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7o7BrlbaDs

You can be the conductor!

2010-05-06T13:59:00.000-07:00

Bravo Gustavo! Gustavo Dudamel is the young conductor from Venezuela who is taking the USA by storm. He was recently appointed music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In response to the excitement created by his arrival in LA (his appearance here in San Francisco next fall is already sold out) Scott Arenstein has created a special music game Bravo Gustavo!. In an iPhone application, one can use the phone as a baton and conduct the orchestra using Dudamel’s virtual shoes. With Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique users try to strike the right key at the right moment to accent the music. You earn points for each correct click as the iPhone puts you in front of a virtual orchestra. The tempo of the orchestra responds to the movement of the iPhone “conductor”. The goal for Arenstein is to reach out to people not familiar with classical music and give them a unique experience. Since tickets for Dudamel’s concerts are all sold out, this application also allows people to get engaged with him without going to a concert. The music had to be slightly altered to afford the best opportunities for gaming and, while this is common in pop music, this was a new venture for classical musicians. So if you see someone waving their iPhone on the streets, you may see someone aiming to become the next wunderkind of conducting.

Self-esteem, performance and Ragazzi

2010-04-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

In the March 2010 Atlantic Monthly, in an article titled “How a new jobless era will transform America,” there is a discussion of expectations for success among current college graduates.

“Many of today’s young adults seem temperamentally unprepared for the circumstances in which they now find themselves,” according to Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University. “There’s this idea that, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to work, but I’m still going to get all the stuff I want.’” She raises the question about how this definition of self-esteem “decoupled from performance” will impact these young people in their life. “There’s an element of entitlement—they expect people to figure things out for them.” Don Peck, the author of the article, thinks this lack of initiative hurts these young adults as they seek to succeed in the current work environment. He points out that the economic situation of today requires “perseverance, adaptability, humility and entrepreneurialism.”

In Ragazzi rehearsals, the boys are encouraged to work hard and to take responsibility for themselves. Built into the system is the learning to delay gratification since the hard work of the rehearsal is rewarded later by the long term goal of a satisfactory performance. When Ragazzi has standards for behavior or clear expectations for promotion, we are teaching our young people that they must perform and earn their way. Dr. Twenge notes that “the ability to persevere and keep going” is a much better predictor of life success than self-esteem for its own sake.

Given the competitive nature of the current job market, Ragazzi’s preparation for life success is even more vital. Our training can reinforce the message that hard work does pay off, that one can set a goal and find success and happiness. Joyce Keil

Performing arts and success

2010-03-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

Assistant Artistic Director Jennifer Cowgill shares this article by Thomas Friedman, the author of The World is Flat. The student from Harker is actively involved in the Performing Arts. As Jennifer notes, this is more proof that the arts benefit children in their education in so many ways. As Friedman states in the article, "In today's wired world, the most important economic competition is no longer between countries and companies. The most important economic competition is actually between you and your own imagination." Check it out if you get a chance...

Read the whole article here:
America’s Real Dream Team
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: March 20, 2010
Went to a big Washington dinner last week. You know the kind: Large hall; black ties; long dresses. But this was no ordinary dinner. There were 40 guests of honor. So here’s my Sunday news quiz: I’ll give you the names of most of the honorees, and you tell me what dinner I was at. Ready?
Skip to next paragraph
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
Go to Columnist Page »
Linda Zhou, Alice Wei Zhao, Lori Ying, Angela Yu-Yun Yeung, Lynnelle Lin Ye, Kevin Young Xu, Benjamin Chang Sun, Jane Yoonhae Suh, Katheryn Cheng Shi, Sunanda Sharma, Sarine Gayaneh Shahmirian, Arjun Ranganath Puranik, Raman Venkat Nelakant, Akhil Mathew, Paul Masih Das, David Chienyun Liu, Elisa Bisi Lin, Yifan Li, Lanair Amaad Lett, Ruoyi Jiang, Otana Agape Jakpor, Peter Danming Hu, Yale Wang Fan, Yuval Yaacov Calev, Levent Alpoge, John Vincenzo Capodilupo and Namrata Anand.
No, sorry, it was not a dinner of the China-India Friendship League. Give up?
O.K. All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards dinner was Tuesday, and, as you can see from the above list, most finalists hailed from immigrant families, largely from Asia.
Indeed, if you need any more convincing about the virtues of immigration, just come to the Intel science finals. I am a pro-immigration fanatic. I think keeping a constant flow of legal immigrants into our country — whether they wear blue collars or lab coats — is the key to keeping us ahead of China. Because when you mix all of these energetic, high-aspiring people with a democratic system and free markets, magic happens. If we hope to keep that magic, we need immigration reform that guarantees that we will always attract and retain, in an orderly fashion, the world’s first-round aspirational and intellectual draft choices.
This isn’t complicated. In today’s wired world, the most important economic competition is no longer between countries or companies. The most important economic competition is actually between you and your own imagination. Because what your kids imagine, they can now act on farther, faster, cheaper than ever before — as individuals. Today, just about everything is becoming a commodity, except imagination, except the ability to spark new ideas.
If I just have the spark of an idea now, I can get a designer in Taiwan to design it. I can get a factory in China to produce a prototype. I can get a factory in Vietnam to mass manufacture it. I can use Amazon.com to handle fulfillment. I can use freelancer.com to find someone to do my logo and manage my backroom. And I can do all this at incredibly low prices. The one thing that is not a commodity and never will be is that spark of an idea. And this Intel dinner was all about our best sparklers.
Before the dinner started, each contestant stood by a storyboard explaining their specific project. Namrata Anand, a 17-year-old from the Harker School in California, patiently explained to me her research, which used spectral analysis and other data to expose information about the chemical enrichment history of “Andromeda Galaxy.” I did not understand a word she said, but I sure caught the gleam in her eye.
My favorite chat, though, was with Amanda Alonzo, a 30-year-old biology teacher at Lynbrook High School in San Jose, Calif. She had taught two of the finalists. When I asked her the secret, she said it was the resources provided by her school, extremely “supportive parents” and a grant from Intel that let her spend part of each day inspiring and preparing students to enter this contest. Then she told me this: Local San Jose realtors are running ads in newspapers in China and India telling potential immigrants to “buy a home” in her Lynbrook school district because it produced “two Intel science winners.”
Seriously, ESPN or MTV should broadcast the Intel finals live. All of the 40 finalists are introduced, with little stories about their lives and aspirations. Then the winners of the nine best projects are announced. And finally, with great drama, the overall winner of the $100,000 award for the best project of the 40 is identified. This year it was Erika Alden DeBenedictis of New Mexico for developing a software navigation system that would enable spacecraft to more efficiently “travel through the solar system.” After her name was called, she was swarmed by her fellow competitor-geeks.
Gotta say, it was the most inspiring evening I’ve had in D.C. in 20 years. It left me thinking, “If we can just get a few things right — immigration, education standards, bandwidth, fiscal policy — maybe we’ll be O.K.” It left me feeling that maybe Alice Wei Zhao of North High School in Sheboygan, Wis., chosen by her fellow finalists to be their spokeswoman, was right when she told the audience: “Don’t sweat about the problems our generation will have to deal with. Believe me, our future is in good hands.”
As long as we don’t shut our doors.

Practice, Success and Teamwork Part 3 of 4

2010-03-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

Can practice trump talent?

In the December 17 2001 New Yorker, there was an article about the SAT test and how it is being reconsidered as an indicator of success for college admissions. Malcolm Gladwell, in that article, referred to studies produced by Stanley Kaplan which found that the test results were coachable and therefore not a measure of true “raw” ability. To back up this opinion, the author cited another study done on music talent by John Sloboda. Looking at 256 music students between the ages of 10-16 drawn from a variety of schools, they found that the best predictor of success was the number of hours practiced. Amazingly, the successful students practiced an average of 800% more than the kids on the bottom of the scale.

The other factor for success was the degree of parent investment in the student’s success. Rather than dropping a student off at the music school, these parents went into the practice room and then reviewed the procedures at home. This corroborates the study cited last week about the successful team of surgeons. The achievers reviewed and sought to problem-solve after every effort. What was not important was the prestige of the school that the student went to.

The author concludes that ability cannot be separated from effort. So thanks parents for your interest in your boys and keep practicing.

Program notes for March 13 concert

2010-03-11T11:21:00.000-08:00

La Danza is from a collection of songs “Les soirées musicales”, a collection of songs finished in 1835 during Rossini’s post-operatic writing period. Even though La Danza is intended to be a stand-alone choral chamber work, Rossini’s dramatic background is evident in the catchy melodies, dramatic pauses, and characteristic flair; even the text is written by a librettist. The quick lilting rhythms in ⁶₈-time reference the tarantella, an upbeat Italian folk dance, and the rapid delivery of text evokes the ‘patter song’, a familiar element in comic opera.

Ständchen is an ultra-Romantic work, from its exotic key relationships to the mystical poetic text. Set for a soloist with the choir, the piece is very similar to a Lied, or an art song which attempts to create a mood by perfectly combining words and music.

The barbershop-quartet style in I Wish I was Single gives the listener a slice of 1800’s vaudeville entertainment. The piece itself lies somewhere between lowbrow minstrel entertainment and folk song, and would have been one element in a variety show of music, dance, skits, and humor. Often, the American minstrel show is associated with darker themes and coarse humor, but this song is a cheeky and jocular tale of a man who just can’t seem to find a wife.

We Rise Again presents the theme of ‘life goes on’ using the imagery of nature and children. The song is set as a series of three verses followed by a refrain; each refrain becomes more complex until the final a cappella presentation. The layers of descants, gentle syncopations, and improvisational melodic riffs evoke a pop style.

Glory Hallelujah is an African-American spiritual arranged for choir. This piece also relies on rhythmic syncopation, but in a much more relaxed way than We Rise Again. Note the call-and-response structure, dialect, and rich chord structures which are key elements in the spiritual style.

Hallelujah, Amen! is the final triumphant chorus from Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabeus. Written in 1746, the oratorio actually references 2^nd century stories presented in a musical language which is still fresh and exciting for the 20^th century listener.

Quando m’en Vo is also known as Musetta’s Waltz from the second act of La Boheme. Musetta has just tricked her old suitor into leaving her alone at the café. She sees her former lover and teases him with this seductive song.

Rossini’s work La Carità is a Romantic work in music, text, and spirit. The title literally translates “charity” but poetically translates to “Divine Love.” While singing about this mystical cosmic love, the music revels in Romantic-period idioms: extremes in dynamics, unexpected chord progressions, rubato, and changing texture between solo and chorus voices.

Yo le Canto exemplifies the playful melodies and catchy rhythms of Venezuelan music. This pieces challenges singers with offbeat accents, syncopations, shifting meters, and independence from the piano accompaniment.

The melody and text to La Bonne Nouvelle were found by American composer Robert Sieving in a long out-of-print music textbook. The melody’s gentle character is highlighted by the craft of composition – the oboe, piano, and voice melodies entwine in different combinations as if in conversation. The sensitive nature of the piece reflects its origin as a Christmas lullaby.

The text for The Poet Sings is a composite of a poem by Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947) and composer J. Randall Stroope’s reaction to this enigmatic text inspired by nature. J. Randall Stroope writes about his work:

“Humanity spends a lifetime trying to find a voice – trying to be heard. Even strong voices soon pass, but their messages light up stars in constellations far beyond their dreams. A voice never knows when its message is a light which others will use to navigate their lives. Send out the best messages, for they may be shaping future generations.”

Note the careful use of register to underscore the mood and themes: the piece begins with an ethereal sound and text using a small range of notes, but expands to a full range to emphasize the message – “stay the course, light a star, change the world where’er you are”.

Like many gospel pieces, Shine On Me has a text which can be interpreted on different levels. “Shine on me, Shine on me. I wonder if the lighthouse will shine on me” can be about searching for guidance on both a physical and spiritual level. The melodies fit into complex harmonies while a descant line ornaments and rises above the texture – all elements characteristic of the African-American improvisational style.

Stevie Wonder’s love song Knocks me off my feet leads to our last section. These pieces give Ragazzi an opportunity to show off a more popular style of singing. Put A Little Love In Your Heart is a combination of the 1968 hit with references to Love Train. The 1964 hit, C’mon Everybody, captures the energy and vitality associated with Elvis Presley’s performances, and the finale features a medley of ABBA’s hits.

Dedicated to the children of Haiti and all children who suffer from disasters, wars and famine, Ragazzi joins together to sing what has become the anthem of hope for children of the world.

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Practice, Success and Teamwork Part 2 of 4

2010-03-01T21:08:00.000-08:00

Practice, Success and Teamwork Part 2 of 4

Ragazzi Boys Chorus Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

What part does teamwork play in building successful people?

In the New Yorker January 28 2002 article “The Learning Curve”, Atul Gawande discusses a research project where various working methods and the results of these methods are tested with various teams of surgeons. The teams were trying to learn some new and complicated procedures. All were trying to learn to accomplish their goals in a short time and all had good experience and came from highly respected institutions. Yet some teams were much faster and much more successful than others. Richard Bohmer, who was one of the researchers from Harvard, noted that the key ingredient for success was the cooperation and teamwork of the group and the willingness of the leader to discuss the work with the other members. The group who did most poorly had no sense of teamwork, and in fact, because they were performing so miserably, they were re-formed for each project. There was no continuity for this group. They had no pre-surgery meetings, no de-briefings and no tracking of final results.

This research project concluded that learning is best achieved when team members work closely together, perform the same procedures frequently and in close succession and then track their results together so they can see where improvement is needed.

This has implications for how we work in Ragazzi. We ask our singers to be there every rehearsal; we emphasize the importance of the entire chorus being together every week and we track results. We work with the boys to let them see their successes and achievements.

While we love music and seek to achieve excellence in this field, we are proud that our teaching can help our boys become successful in all areas of life as they learn to apply these winning strategies.

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

"From an "Old" Parent

2010-02-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Ragazzi,

I have been listening to the latest Ragazzi CD. Always such a treat. I love the Laetatus Sum, the Biebl, Sound the Trumpet etc. etc. I continue to be amazed by the range and quality of the music and of the singing. I wonder though if it’s clear to the younger boys and their parents just how far into the future the impact of Ragazzi continues. Certainly long after Concert Choir, even YME. We recently returned to Boston to hear our son sing. He’s a senior and a Choral Scholar at Harvard. There are not many Scholars, interestingly 2 are from Ragazzi. Anyway in addition to hearing him sing in the University Choir, we heard him sing Albert Herring in Benjamin Britten’s opera of the same name. It’s a difficult piece and yet he was coping well with it and immensely enjoying the singing. And I think back to conversations with other parents over the years, eg Peter Sherman’s parents (Peter is a soloist on Ragazzi’s 1^st and 2^nd CD’s) and Conrad Frank (another Ragazzi soloist) and it strikes me that this focus on instilling a love of singing and of the discipline needed to excel at it pays such huge dividends for these boys later on in life wherever they end up. (Peter, I think is a Marine officer in the Far East last I heard, Conrad is a professional counter-tenor). So as current parents drive through the rain with fidgety young boys in the back seats and wonder is all this effort by them and their boys worthwhile in the longer term, I believe the answer is “Yes, Yes, Yes…”

Jonathan MacQuitty

Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

Ragazzi Boys Chorus

Practice, Success and Teamwork Part 1 of 4

2010-02-19T18:20:00.000-08:00

Practice, Success and Teamwork Part 1 of 4
Ragazzi Boys Chorus, Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

In the January 28 2002 issue of the New Yorker I discovered an interesting fact about learning and achievement. High achievers are not necessarily more talented; they practice more! In “The Learning Curve” by Atul Gawanda there was a discussion of the learning curve even as it applies to surgeons. The surgeon must practice just like everyone else (but the frightening truth is that he practices on people where the risk is human life)! As Gawande honestly and disturbingly describes his early attempts at surgery, he discusses the value of practice. He quotes K. Anders Ericsson, a cognitive psychologist, who is one of the many who have studied the difference between elite and mediocre performers in all professions. The difference for the high performers is the amount of deliberate practice the performer has accumulated. He also found that top performers dislike practice as much as others, but they have the will to keep at it.

I was heartened by this news. On those days in 2002 as I faced endless rainy days knowing that I had to put in hours drilling Russian for our Russian concert, I remembered that it was OK that I wasn’t delighted with this task. As adults we know why we practice. We can anticipate the triumph of our labor and taste its fruits in anticipation. Children do not know about the pay-off of hard work and even if they do know, they often forget in the heat of the moment when distracted by more immediate temptations.

I encourage all of us to remember that it is the will to achieve which drives us and to remember to look for the joy that achievement yields. Ragazzi Premiere, Full Concert Chorus and Young Men’s Ensemble felt this exhilaration in 2002 and they feel it after every concert now where they have struggled and succeeded. All of our young singers will feel this again this year as they present concerts of music which has challenged them.

How do we achieve that thrill? We practice! And sometimes (often) practice is fun!! See the recent post on How to Practice for ideas. Watch this blog for more on learning and achievement.

An unexpected mix.

2010-02-08T09:26:00.000-08:00

Punk Rocker sings Nessun Dorma. Check out the full clip from Britain's Got Talent.

Singing is cool

2010-02-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

Once the preserve of middle-aged women with fawn footwear and frowsy hair, choirs are suddenly "in". Across London, bright young things are as likely to be found Facebooking each other about singing practice as parties, while choirs such as Gaggle, the Funk Chorus and Harmony on Heels gain followers.
Read more about this trend in the TimesOnline.

Not only that, Haiti earthquake victims sang to keep their spirits up as they camped out in emergency tent villages. Singing is good for you, builds community and helps you get through hard times.

2010-01-28T10:29:00.000-08:00

Cuba New Years 2009 through January 6 2010, Joyce Keil, Artistic Director Ragazzi Boys Chorus

December 30

I was invited by a friend to travel to Cuba to celebrate New Year’s Eve but immediately ran into problems as I understood there were immigration problems. As I explored the options, coincidentally, I received an email from the Canada Cuba Sports and Cultural Festivals inviting me to explore a music tour to Cuba. I called the contact there and discovered that if I were to go on a cultural mission, I would be able to travel legally under the general license of the U.S. Treasury Department. The Festival company offered to host us, to meet our plane and to set up visits to schools and choirs in Havana.

Our Cuban journey began with an arduous plod through security, past many guards, all masked against the danger of disease, and then meeting a white-clad nurse wearing black fishnet stockings who was there to check for swine flu. My companion and I were met at the airport by the Cuban representative from the Canada Cuba Sports and Cultural Festivals and his future son-in-law. I was greeted with the gift of a rose and we drove in Osmany’s (smelly, rusty, Russian-made) old car to our Hotel Ingleterre. The hotel was a crumbling colonial structure attempting to offer European-style hospitality. The rooms were either windowless and rather musty with mildew showers or, if they had windows, the windows opened onto the street where horns honked and music drifted in until the wee hours.

Havana is crammed with beautiful, columned colonial buildings, most in disrepair. Many have missing walls or roofs and you can tell that people are living there because there is always a line of laundry hanging from the windows. The streets are so full of potholes that a local comedian uses this as a subject of his television show.

The presence of billboards and posters with pictures of Che Guevera or Fidel Castro were omnipresent, on the streets, on buildings and later in the schools and public buildings. Using a medium that the USA would use to advertise a product, Cuban billboards were shouting “51 ans! Viva la revolucion!!” or “Vencemos” (We shall conquer!!).

The streets were crowded with hundreds of old 50’s vehicles along with some Russian cars and buses. All of these were jammed with people. To cross the street was very dangerous; pedestrians had no right of way and if a vehicle encountered a walker, the driver simply sped up and honked until the pedestrian scurried away.

Our hosts took us to lunch at a typical Cuban restaurant which they told me would be a destination for Ragazzi if we were to go there on tour. It was dark and definitely not a tourist site. The food was plain but good; however it took an hour for it to be served.

December 31
We spent the day wandering the city. We walked down Obispo Street, crowded with people. Because of the holiday, there were lots of local Cubans out on the street, but not many tourists. Many of the shops were closed. In front of one storefront was a pig roasting on a rotisserie; apparently this is a New Year’s Eve tradition. There was a plaza surrounded by restaurants and little booths selling mostly books. If one wants to use a bathroom, one can duck into a café and order a coffee. Bring your own paper, though.

One restaurant had a patio filled with plants and caged birds along with a resident peacock: great fish and shrimp, good potatoes and coffee.

We stopped in the Museum of the Revolution and because my friend speaks Spanish, a passionate older man lectured us for an hour on the great Cuban society. He told us that on every block is a revolutionary committee member who watches over the people in that area. He insisted that no one is without a place to sleep, or without food, or without health care. The walls were covered with pictures and posters and I learned details of the revolution that I hadn’t known, for example, that Fidel and Raul came to Cuba in the early 50’s in a boat (that is now housed in a glass enclosed monument) with 100 other people. Eighty-two of them were killed. They then took to the mountains and emerged with Che Guevera and 4000 others and conquered Battista’s army of 10,000 in 1959. He claimed stories about Kennedy’s assassination, e.g. that Oswald had been trying to convince Mexico that Cuba was responsible for Kennedy’s death and that Ruby was Mafioso.

My friend, who has lived in numerous Latin American countries, affirmed that indeed Cuba lacked the intense poverty that is widespread in these other countries. We saw no little children with distended stomachs, but certainly the needs of the great majority of Cubans are only minimally met.

Cuba has preserved its architecture and values the arts, unlike Russia or China where all “frivolous activities” and anything but utilitarian buildings were destroyed or covered over. In St. Petersburg the facades of the great palaces (except the ones preserved for tourists) were covered with slabs forming concrete facades and divided into dismal apartments. Here the buildings are divided, but not destroyed. As there seems to be no money for infrastructure maintenance, they look very unstable. Music and art are encouraged and there are many artists selling their work along pradas or in outdoor art markets.

Maybe because of the holiday, a troupe of dancers and musicians on stilts came by and entertained the crowds. Loud music everywhere.

At the end of the street is the harbor with the old medieval sea wall and fortress. Across the harbor is a huge statue of Jesus Christ of Havana, reminding me of the one in South America. Looking to our left, we could see large, modern buildings which represent the newer section of Havana. Most of these buildings are also depressed except for the hotels for foreigners.

The government owns all the businesses, so the taxi drivers are part of a government-owned business. They get to keep their tips, however. Apparently there is great inequity in income and the TV comedian was joking that a local brain surgeon got drunk and began to dream grandiose dreams. He became so deluded that he thought he was a hotel porter (this was funny because the hotel porters get tips which they can keep and so make a lot more money than anyone else).

New Year’s Eve at the Tropicana. Waiting to get into the outdoor restaurant, one has to wait at the 50’s bar and I can just picture Ricky Ricardo’s band there. Cars and taxis drive up and deposit a collection of elegant people at the front door: some tourists, some wealthy Cubans. Extravagant dances and shows are on several stages during dinner. Each guest is given a flower (for the women) or a cigar (for the men), as well as a gift bag containing candy, a sculpture and a party mask. Guests were served free wine, rum and then finally champagne. At midnight the band came out for dancing.

Driving home we saw wet streets everywhere as Cubans ring in the new year by throwing water out of the window to expel the evil spirits of the old year.

January 1
The weather is hot and we walk to “Chinatown” which consists of an arch and buildings that are even more dilapidated than the others we had seen. This was a rest day with an excursion to the roof of the hotel with wonderful views of the (maintained) ballet building and a view to the sea.

January 2
We took a taxi to a local beach, but now it was cold. The beach was deserted and lined with sad communist-style buildings and spotted with little cafes. We had a coffee at one where the owner claimed to be the best chef in Cuba. Judging by the cleanliness of the restroom, we decided not to test his claim.

Lunch was at Norvo, arguably the best restaurant in Havana, certainly the most popular. We avoided lines that extended down the block by arriving early. The portions were huge. I was served two huge steaks of Halibut and I could only eat half of one. The waiter here spoke sassy English, but when we asked him where he had learned it, he had learned it all been in Cuba. No one travels out of the country here.

Visited another museum of the revolution which displayed something called The Cretin’s Corner. Here were huge caricatures of HW Bush, Reagan and Battista with the motto: Thank you for helping us in the revolution. It was a painful sight to read all of the blatant anti-USA rhetoric and people were laughing. I was feeling very patriotic and embarrassed and then defensive, because when I had to use the bathroom, I had to pay for 3 squares of paper, the toilet didn’t flush and the sink to wash hands didn’t work. I thought of USA’s clean, functioning bathrooms.

We ducked into one of the few remaining churches that hadn’t been designated for another use. I felt a need to pray for Cuba. The Spanish embassy and the museums, including the military museums displaying the tanks from the Bay of Pigs, were among the few buildings that show any sign of maintenance.

Dinner with our host’s family at a fancy restaurant obviously geared to tourists. It was decorated in cowboy décor and the waitresses were young and pretty with short white dresses and cowboy hats. We talked about the internet. At the hotel, there are 3-4 computers working at any given time and a long line to get access to them. Once you get access, it takes a long time to establish connection. You have to buy a card with an hour’s worth of access per session and half of that time can be spent trying to get to your site. The local people are not permitted to use the internet, although businesses can use search engines such as Google and Yahoo. So even though business people can, as a result, see what’s going on in the world, they are not allowed to use g mail or yahoo mail. All email has to be monitored by the government.

January 3
Our host gets a friend to drive us to the country. We pass lots of middle class homes that would seem like shacks to most of us. My friend again contrasts these with what exists in other Latin American countries and asserts that these are much better than what he has seen elsewhere.

We arrive at Lenin Park (!). I don’t think any Eastern bloc countries continue to venerate Lenin, but here there are statues of political heroes scattered among the trees -another example of propaganda everywhere. A small pony is tied up to a tree waiting for children to take a ride in a little circle. Loud music blares from a portable player and the smell of roasted meat is carried through the air from the various outdoor barbeque stations. There is a lot of beef, chicken and pork for sale. A man is weaving hats from palm fronds and so I buy one in hopes that I can somehow bring it home. Four boys admire my hat, but turn away when they find out that the hats cost one peso each. Feeling a bit ostentatious as the rich Yanqui, I bought hats for all the boys and then took their picture.

Leaving the park, we drove through a beautiful forest filled with banyan trees in the heart of Havana. In this neighborhood are many large mansions, most of them embassies, but some are inhabited by multiple families or multiple generations of one family.

Our host took us to another restaurant where he was hosting a Canadian women’s sports team for lunch. It was a cold day, but on warmer days, his groups often swim in the outdoor pool after eating together. The visiting sports or music groups are always connected with Cuban groups with the same interests. Lunch was good, and as we left, we saw a small Christmas tree next to posters of the “Five Innocents” with the slogan: volverán! (Return them.) There are many posters of these five men who have been held by the USA in Miami and who, according to the government claims on the posters, are not allowed to be visited by their families in Cuba.

Returning along the sea-road, we passed the United State “place of interest”, a modern, heavily-guarded edifice surrounded by US Marines. Apparently anti-American demonstrations center here. Next to this building is a huge display of 124 Cuban flags, one for each Cuban killed by “US terrorists”. It is a stunning juxtaposition and among the Cuban flags is one black flag to represent mourning. On some days, there are more black flags and no one was able to explain the reasons for this to us.

January 4. Our music visits begin.
The Conservatory Municipal Alejandro Garcia. This is a conservatory where the students are chosen by their aptitude, measured by singing and rhythm auditions and physical characteristics such as finger length, potential embouchure, arm length for holding a violin, etc. The students are accepted at age seven and each year must endure rigorous tests. Each student must sing in the choir, study one instrument and also piano.

The beginning chorus sings for us in a pleasing unison and then various instrumentalists play for us. The older adolescent students are astounding in their ability to play rapid passages on the bass and alto saxophone. The singers demonstrate excellent mouth shapes for the vowels. When they sing Cuban songs, their bodies are loose and move to the rhythms.

After the second graders sang, an older chorus sang something slightly more complex. The little girls sat behind us and eagerly leaned toward us trying to talk with us and examine us. My companion was able to speak Spanish to them and they were so delighted to communicate with us. It brought tears to both our eyes.

If students pass the tests each year, they remain in the music program and they then can attend the university for music. If they succeed there, they can become professional musicians. The most rigorous program is that for choral conductors, who must perform each year for juries of professional conductors.

On the wall is a poster proclaiming “Tolerancia, hacen amigos” with various admonitions for how to get along, and by asking questions such as “When I see someone with different clothes or someone with different color skin or from a different religion, what do I do?”

The Los Angeles Childrens Chorus has formed a collaboration with this school. They have written a song together on the theme: What do I like best about my country. A Los Angeles composer and video artist, Sage Lewis, visited the school and wrote the music for both choirs who are going to perform together via video. They were given a grant and will each give a concert with the other choir performing on a large screen behind them. I was given a copy of this music.

Next we visited a women’s professional choir, Coro Vocal Luna directed by Sonia McKormack. There were 12 women who come from various professions such as choral conductors of church or children’s choirs as well as non-musical professions. However, they are paid and they rehearsal four days a week. (They are allocated four hours of rehearsal a day, but they find they are only productive for two and one-half hours) This lovely Teatro Amadeo was a concert hall and they rehearsed to a Korg keyboard. They told me that normally they rehearse in a very small room with poor air supply. They also told me that some of these women don’t read music, but they pick it up. (After my introduction to the system of music education and the filter for choosing the professional musicians, this doesn’t quite make sense to me.) They were told to show up next week for their evaluation which would determine their salaries for next year.

They rehearsed the same way we all do, by isolating difficult intervals, talking about preparation for the high note, unifying the articulation, etc. Then, unbelievably, I heard American English. There were two men there who knew about Ragazzi. They were visiting with their church on a specific license (i.e. legally on a cultural mission with their church group) and were from Washington D.C. and New York City.

January 5 We walked down a tourist street where the buildings were maintained, painted and in good repair and where there was even a shop selling expensive jewelry. We entered a courtyard of the Museum Alejandro von Humboot. Two huge, perfectly preserved skeletons of dinosaurs, donated by Mexico in 2007, filled the yard. I heard some powerful, rich falsetto singing coming from upstairs. We were ushered up to the rehearsal of Sine Nomine, an eleven-voice professional all-male choir. Their conductor was Leonara Suarez and they were perfecting a program which the conductor wanted them to work without her. The first piece was a beautiful Renaissance piece by Victoria with perfect 5ths that rang and with crescendos and phrasing that astonished. They sang the famous French chanson “Il est bel et bon bon” and then a Hassler piece with dissonance so strong, I was in tears again. They gave me this piece. They then sang a heart-wrenching “Danny Boy” and a great medley of Beatles and Queen music. All the rehearsing was done by memory by both singers and conductor. Their English is better than ours because all the vowels are formed consciously and beautifully.
They sang so beautifully, but their rehearsal room was divided only by wooden slats which did not protect them from the street noises, including loud honking horns. Somehow they were able to keep their focus

Lunch at La Templeta, finally. Beautiful building, wonderful service, great food- and on the waterfront.

Afternoon we visited Schola Cantorumm, a professional mixed choir of 24 singers. They were learning the Fauré Requiem and using the piano to sound it out. It was interesting how this piece, with its unusual harmonies, was so difficult for them. On the board was a list of their repertoire which included Poulenc, Casals, Juramento (a Cuban piece that I have), and a Magnificat by Salazar. They sang two complicated African-Cuban songs and again the rhythmic dexterity of these musicians is awe-inspiring. If Ragazzi tours to Cuba, we will receive workshops in this type of music.

We decided to walk back to the hotel along the same street, Obispo, which now that the holiday was over was crowded with tourists. The atmosphere was more upbeat and the stores and cafes are open.

January 6. Cristina Arce, the principal of Conservatorio de Musical Guilermo Tomas, a high school greeted us. They are just back from vacation and the chorus of boys and girls is not very strong. I am given an extensive lecture on the music education system and the methods used to extract the most talented, dedicated and prepared musicians. This system was begun in 1977, so the directors of some of the most famous professional choirs, e.g. Maria Perez, conductor of Exaudi, had to take their education in Germany. Once a conductor has been given this prestigious job, they must work with young singers for 3-5 years in addition to their professional choral responsibilities.

Instrumental students, among them a wonderful bass player, played for us as well as a young girl on violin with her teacher (or her mother?) on piano. The pianos are so out of tune, one wonders how they can learn to sing in tune. This piece sounded poly-tonal because of the discrepancies in tuning between the violin and the piano.

Propaganda is everywhere and at this school, there is a poster quoting Fidel’s philosophy of education. To summarize: Education is everything, education is always valuable, it develops ethics, and an attitude for life. It sows feelings. Education is seeking always the good in the soul of the human, whose development is a struggle of contradictions, with instincts toward egotism and attitudes that have to be counteracted and (it) alone can move us toward consensus.

Afternoon we visited the excellent Leo Coro, 12 singers who have been trained in opera technique and are powerful and expressive. Lots and lots of “ng” warm ups. Then they sang a Monteverdi Madrigal with fast ornamented lines. Even in the Renaissance music, the singers keep a steady pulse with their bodies. Every song is sung with expressive faces.

For our last night, we were entertained at our host’s home which he has hand-built making maximum use of a tiny space. He invited other friends and everyone was warm and generous. At the end of the evening, he told us that he is a Catholic and he has the following over his door: God bless this house. He tells me that he wakes up every morning and thanks God for his life, and for the gifts that he has: bread and water and shelter. I am so moved by the humble gratitude of this man and this family living under an oppressive regime with limited comforts but who can celebrate life. This has been my experience with the Cubans, warm, generous, artistic people who celebrate life.

Responding to disaster with song: music in Haiti

2010-01-23T10:44:00.000-08:00

For more than a week, there have been stories about Haitians struggling to cope with the destruction of their country. But even amid the rubble, there are moments of reprieve. In this audio postcard, we hear how some women and children formed a circle and chanted praise for Joshua's victory in Jericho.

The story is featured here on NPR.

Choral music is on the rise!

2010-01-14T10:43:00.001-08:00

From the January 10, 2010 San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Datebook comes this:

“First there was “Glee.” Then “The Sing-off.” Now, from public radio, it’s “VoiceBox,” a show dedicated to the art of singing and it’s coming out of San Francisco.”

Tune in to KALW (91.7 FM) on Friday nights at 10 and hear arts journalist and a cappella singer Chloe Veltman discuss “Why do we sing?” Ella Fitzgerald, community choruses, countertenors and cabaret artists from the Bay Area will participate. Veltman hopes to bring the level of depth and intelligence to her conversations that is typical of the conversations of Terry Gross and Michael Krasny. The website is http://www.voicebox-media.org/.

Courage and Empathy

2009-12-16T20:23:00.000-08:00

What makes a courageous man? In Michael Thompson’s book, Raising Cain, the case is made that boys are particularly vulnerable in our society because we do not encourage them to develop an emotional vocabulary or self-understanding. Too often boys are encouraged to mindlessly “be strong.” Without self-understanding, boys can develop tendencies to emotional outbursts that endanger them and society. A principal at a school in Missouri notes “Boys, in particular, just have trouble verbalizing when they’re upset.” Carol Stewart, the founder of AmericaFest, a music festival that was devoted to singing only for men and boys, was inspired by the book Raising Cain and quoted it extensively in her video about the festival; for example, redefining the concept of male strength: “Teach boys that emotional courage is courage and that courage and empathy are the sources of real strength in life.”

Carol Stewart and Michael Thompson believe that boys need role models of men who use “discipline to build character and conscience not enemies.” Boys who came together at the festival and who were interviewed said that they hadn’t realize how deeply they loved music. They had discovered a new resource within themselves and, what is more important, they discovered that there is a big world of other boys and young men who share their passion and interest, who are discovering new depths of emotional knowledge. They made new friends from around the world.

Ragazzi begins this process of creating community and building emotional understanding for boys through music. Younger boys have the Concert Group and the Young Mens Ensemble to look up to. These experienced singers have discovered the depth of their love for music and they have committed time and energy to share it with audiences. They have developed the discipline to work slowly and persistently for the reward of excellence. Musical appreciation, along with musical skills, grows over time. As boys form deep bonds and learn the language of music, they learn the language of their inner lives and they discover a safe place to experience and share that. By understanding themselves, they have the courage to freely express themselves and through this, they learn to have empathy for their fellow human beings.

- Joyce Keil, Artistic Director

The Way Music Enriches Our Lives

2009-12-12T13:11:00.000-08:00

There are so many ways that singing enriches our lives. Below are two recent excerpts - one for reading and one for listening - which highlight the qualities which singing instills:

---From Ode magazine, October 2009:

“What’s so good about singing? Well, there are physiological benefits: you use your lungs in a way you probably don’t the rest of the day; you breathe deeply and openly. And there are psychological benefits: singing leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness. And there are what I’d call ‘civilizational benefits’. When you sing with a group of people you learn how to subsume yourself to the group consciousness because …singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings: to stop being me for a little while, and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great virtue ….I want to encourage you to sing….I believe singing is the key to a long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, greater intelligence, new friends, increased self confidence,…and a sense of humor."

---The NPR project "This I Believe" has posted this 3-minute lecture by Brian Eno about the power of song.

Celebrate Christmas with Ragazzi

2009-12-03T23:06:00.000-08:00

Music celebrating Christmas has flourished into a rich and diverse repertoire. This year, Ragazzi's Christmas Concerts are happening on Dec 5, 6, and 13 in the Bay Area. Tickets and locations are available at http://ragazzi.org/concerts.htm. The music embraces the wide variety of ways in which people celebrate the holiday and the different meanings taken from the Christmas story – sacred and secular, somber and playful, restrained and joyful, repentant and hopeful. Here is a preview of the concert:

The opening of the concert sets the background for the actual story. The Glory of the Father presents an ethereal idea – “the word made flesh and dwelt among us.” Note the text painting – each instance of the word “glory” blossoms into a lush aural indulgence – as the whole story of Christianity is told in a kernel of a single song.

Annunciation Carol and Dixit Maria ad Angelum are musical paintings of the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary and her subsequent response. Despite a difference in era and style, both songs showcase beautiful unaccompanied melodic lines which reflect the serene, graceful image of Mary.

Gesù Bambino and La Bonne Nouvelle highlight carols outside of the English tradition. Gesù Bambino is an Italian carol juxtaposed with O Come, All Ye Faithful in this arrangement by Pietro Yon. The unusual key modulations still sound fresh ninety years after composition, and they also reflect the spirit of juxtaposition – of two melodies or of divinity and humanity. The melody and text to La Bonne Nouvelle were found by American composer Robert Sieving in a long out-of-print music textbook. Ragazzi had a unique experience to host a French choir this fall, and the boys sang this carol as a gesture of friendship.

I Saw Three Ships and The Holly and The Ivy are English tunes from the 15th and 17th centuries. The texts do not map directly onto the Christmas story; rather, they use highly symbolic language. The three verses of Holly and the Ivy are each centered around a symbol: the holly bears the crown, the blossom, and the prickle. The text for I Saw Three Ships is equally nebulous – with possible references to the three kings, the three ideals “faith, hope, and love”, or even nuances towards the three ships of Columbus. This arrangement highlights the playful dance nature of the tune and creates a conversation between the choir and the chamber group.

The Agincourt Hymn is from 15th-century England. The original setting celebrated English victory in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, but the tune has been associated with multiple texts in the ensuing centuries. One consistent element between all versions is the chorus: Deo gratias redde pro Victoria! – Give thanks to God for victory! It is one of the oldest English songs preserved in its original form.

Pat-a-pan is a French carol celebrating Christmas from the perspective of the shepherds. The music represents the sounds of the instruments in the text: the “pat-a-pan” and accompaniment imitate the drum and the “tu-re-lu-re-lu” mimics the sound of the flute. There is a striking similarity between Pat-a-pan and Wilberg’s arrangement of Fum, Fum, Fum! Both pieces are all about music and sound – the dancing quality of the rhythm, playful interaction of voices, and the instrument imitations unite to portray the excitement of Christmas in a folk-style.

The lush arrangement of Still, Still, Still is a lullaby. The rich harmonies support the piece as the melody weaves between the instruments and the choir to create a luxurious sound reflecting the text – falling snow, dreaming, the peaceful night, and the joyous day to come.

The Sametz Noel! is an exciting juxtaposition of modern composition with medieval text. The text is short: “Out of your sleep awake for God mankind now hath he take all of a maiden without any make Noel!” The excitement of the piece is generated by the overlapping rhythms, tight syncopations, and contrasting articulation.

Glory Hallelujah to duh Newbo’n King features an American spiritual arranged for choir. This piece also relies on rhythmic syncopation, but in a much more relaxed way than the Sametz Noel. Note the call-and-response structure, dialect, and rich chord structures which are key elements in the spiritual style.

Gloria is written by contemporary composer John Leavitt, who was born in 1956 in Leavenworth Kansas. He has directed choirs at a number of universities and is a prolific composer. While Leavitt’s “Gloria” contains a traditional Christmas text sung in Latin, it is filled with Leavitt’s signature rhythmic patterns and mixed meters.

Our Winter Wonderland is a medley of three Christmas carols that are all about an old-fashioned Christmas. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year was written in 1963 by Eddie Pola and George Wyle. It was recorded and released that same year on Andy Williams’ very first Christmas album. Let it Snow was written by Jule Styne in 1945. World War II was just over and this new song reflected the feeling of warmth and security associated with Christmas. Winter Wonderland was written by Felix Bernard and first published in 1934. It was a favorite of the Andrews Sisters and Perry Como and has undoubtedly contributed to the magical vision of snow and snowman building at Christmas (not something that Ragazzi boys get to do very often!).

Ding-dong! Merrily on high is a 15th century tune married to a 19th century text about ringing the bells to celebrate Christmastide. The melismatic chorus “Gloria” is indulges in the sound of the choir, and the verses talk about the excitement of both heavenly and earthly bells announcing Christmas.

The last five Christmas carols include traditional and well-known carols – 3 sacred and 2 secular takes on the season. Each carol is an opportunity for a conversation between the audience and Ragazzi where the audience sings the traditional version and Ragazzi has prepared individual verses which uniquely capture the mood of the piece. The choir verses include a jazzy version of The First Noel, a syncopated, jaunty arrangement of Deck the Halls, a lush, quiet arrangement of Silent Night, and a musical joke in We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

We know that Christmas is one of many faith traditions represented by our boys, families, and guests. Christmas music remains an integral and vital part of the Western music tradition which is the core of Ragazzi. In the Christmas story, we find messages of hope, family, celebration, peace, and music – elements which are part of every holiday. We hope that your experience today also fills your spirit with warmth, celebration, peace, and music.

Good for kids

2009-11-23T15:24:00.001-08:00

Good parenting, good leadership, good guidance, good education, what’s it all about? How do we measure success? What is kind? What is nurturing for our children?

Anyone who watches situational comedies on TV has seen the deterioration in manners and mores. The humor between children, between children and adults and among adults borders on rudeness, and is peppered with lots of sarcasm and belittling. There is a tendency in popular culture to demean, to praise mediocrity while celebrating self-expression for its own sake. The implication is that this kind of behavior is healthy self-expression and illustrates the way we should interact with each other.

In a recent Atlantic Monthly, there was a report of a longitudinal study of men over a seventy year period. The question was, what is success, what is happiness? The results of this study illustrated the fact that true success and happiness has nothing to do with your job, the amount of money you make, the college you go to. It has to do with your relationships in your world. The happiest men had good friends, knew how to relate in their work environment and created healthy balance in their lives.

Ragazzi sets a culture of teamwork and respect. We learn how to treat each other. In my twenty plus years with Ragazzi, I have seen incredible about turns in boys: in their focus, in their attitude, in their self-confidence, in their sense of teamwork, in their relationships.

As parents and adults, it is our responsibility to provide the leadership for our children. It is our responsibility to set the standards for what we want our children to know, who we want them to be. We can fight the culture of meanness by our expectations, by how we treat each other, by how we respect each other.

We can’t expect our children to know the difference between standards put forth on TV and true values that only we can teach them. We hope you will work with Ragazzi to create a world full of considerate, polite and focused young men who will contribute to their community and ultimately lead happy, successful lives.

- Joyce Keil